Sword of Honor
by pherede
Summary: "Some wars cannot be won with swords." Fantasy AU: Lady al-Ghul rewards her loyal knight Sir Bane with his rival as a new manservant. Bane/Blake, multiple pairings. Angst, lies, and dysfunctional relationships. Complete at last.
1. Chapter 1

Bane had no part in the negotiations. Shifting his grip on the pommel of his greatsword, he reflected that this was perhaps for the best; he would have murdered everyone at the table, Lord al-Ghul included, the moment this possibility was mentioned.

Gods be damned, he was still very close to it; even now, as an honor-guard on the dais, his fingers kept wandering from the pommel of his sword (held upright, point down, a show of strength) to its grip (to raise that length of steel and bring it down)...

One step above him and to his right, the Lady Talia stood like a goddess, a beacon in a white silken mist; her golden skin and quick dark eyes burned into him even though he kept his eyes deliberately on the crowd. Above her, holding her hand, Lord al-Ghul gazed out at his subjects, no smile on his leonine face but satisfaction wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

Lord al-Ghul had but one goal in this, as far as Bane could see: peace with King Bruce, peace for his people and his lands. At any cost, even the most terrible cost.

Beyond Lady Talia stood Bruce himself, the usurper king of Gotham, joy blazing on his face as he accepted Talia's hand from her father. Some vows were said, meaningless; Bruce, whose kingdom turned a blind eye to its suffering peons, whose soldiers took no prisoners when they came across the youthful militia, Bane's men, who were all that defended al-Ghul's borders- Bruce had taken the greatest prize in al-Ghul's coffers, and he would walk away with Talia on his arm while Bane stood sweating and sick with rage on the dais, still burning for the woman who would be Bruce's wife.

Bruce's honor guard was larger than Bane felt propriety allowed. There was Commander Gordon, symbolically holding the helmet of General Dent- still crusty with dried gore, and how was that appropriate for a wedding- and four or five soldiers in their spotless blue armor, and Gordon's man Sir Blake, who Bane loathed.

Gordon's men had murdered the sons and husbands of many women in this crowd. And if Sir Blake, born John of the Robin and only recently raised from squire to knight, had not killed many of Bane's men... he had thwarted so many of Bane's efforts, broken so many of Lord al-Ghul's elegant plans, that at last their hope of peace had diminished to this: Talia's dark curls tugging in the wind as her new husband lifted her veil and laid a kiss, the first of many kisses, upon her perfect mouth.

Bane would have let every peasant in both kingdoms die before he watched this.

Only Talia's words held him back: _trust me, my noble knight, my sweet protector; I must do this, it is my duty. Some wars cannot be won with swords._

* * *

__They said he was a monster, under that mask; but then they also said he was a brute with a slow mind, and John knew better than that. Certainly he was strong, and John dreaded the day he would face the man in combat, but even if he followed the sorcerous Lord al-Ghul's orders with slavish dedication, Bane was no fool.

John watched him throughout the ceremony, glad for once that his face was concealed behind sun-heated blue-cast steel. Bane was a broad man, well-muscled, his body speaking of a will that defied noble luxury. John would have admired him, were he not the king's most formidable enemy.

Bitter nausea churned in John's stomach as he pulled his gaze from Bane to watch his king accept the Lady al-Ghul's hand. He looked happy; he looked like he could love her. John wanted her to die, and all her kin with her.

As the king unveiled his lady wife and tilted her head back with one strong sure hand to kiss her, John tore his eyes away for the sake of his own sanity, only to lock eyes with the masked man across the dais instead. Bane stared at him as though he could see, through the grille of his helmet, that John watched him; and in those blue and piercing eyes there hid something so betrayed and grieving that John felt a spark of kinship.

Bane's mask, the thing that gave him his terrible powers, was a work of al-Ghul's sorcery, and John had always assumed that this was the root of Bane's loyalty. Now, though, with his own heart torn (to his undying shame) and his beautiful, beloved king turning to lead his bride away, John wondered if it was truly ever al-Ghul who held Bane's loyalty at all.

And that night, as he stood guard outside the King's door, listening to the Lady al-Ghul moan and laugh and cry out, hearing the soft murmur of secrets shared between newlyweds, he steeled himself against hot tears of shame and envy by remembering the look in Bane's clear, clever eyes.

* * *

Talia had asked him to stay behind, to let her go to her nuptial bedchamber alone; but Bane humbled himself and begged her, swore to do whatever she asked of him, as long as she let him be near. For her safety, he said, for her protection. In his mind he imagined her screaming for him, imagined himself bursting into the room to find the treacherous king in the act of beating her, and pictured himself tearing the king limb from limb, justified in his rage.

And for all his begging he was not given the door of the chamber to guard; that honor went to the slim boy-knight, Sir Blake, scarcely twenty and a thorn in Bane's side and _still_ chosen above him to stand at the door while the marriage was consummated. Bane waited in the adjoining maids'-chambers, looking at his sword where it rested on some servant's cot, and caught the faintest sounds of pleasure through the wall.

It was not until nearly dawn that his reverie shattered with Talia's screams. He was on his feet in a moment, rushing into the hall; the chamber door already stood open, and Sir Blake's voice came from within.

"My lord! My lord, your grace, wake up-"

Then Bane was at the bedside, where Talia sat bleary-eyed and wrapped in sheets, stricken with horror. Beside her, the king sprawled unconscious, still as a corpse, unbreathing and cool to the touch. Sir Blake knelt over him, half-fallen on the marriage bed itself, cradling his liege and weeping.

King Bruce's body was borne away by Lord al-Ghul's men, to be washed and wrapped; Talia remained, still naked except for her bedclothing, staring blank-eyed after her husband's corpse as her maidservants clustered around her to cling to her sides and stroke her hair.

Sir Blake staggered away, grieving like a widow, and Bane passed him in the hall where he had slumped into an alcove to shudder and weep. For his part, Bane felt none of the grief that seized the palace.

Talia was free.

* * *

Lady Talia played her role so well that it took Bane nearly a week to realize that it _was_ a role. There was a funeral; King Bruce's swathed and fragranced body now rested in an ancestral tomb. The councils of both Gotham and al-Ghul's fiefdom met daily, and rules and laws for trade were set down. Care of Gotham fell to Commander Gordon, who took vows as regent the same day that Bruce breathed his last, and nothing greater seemed to come of it for al-Ghul than that Gordon agreed to send men to help him hold his borders.

It seemed that peace had at last been achieved.

Lady Talia was demure and sorrowful in public, hinting that she might possibly bear Bruce's child, but withdrawing swiftly from any public scrutiny. If anyone remembered that theirs had been a match bitterly negotiated by old men, it was politely forgotten; the whole kingdom relayed tragic ballads of the king and his wife, their long-anticipated marriage, and his terrible death after only a single night of bliss.

Six days after the death of King Bruce, Bane found Lady Talia seated calmly in his billet, hair modestly wimpled (as befit a married woman) and her maidservant Selina at her side.

"My gentle knight," said Talia, without even a hint of the trembling voice she had affected all week. "My champion, our victory is assured."

"As my lady says," responded Bane, taking a knee and bowing his head. What was she doing here? Even with a maidservant as chaperon- it was well known that Selina was Talia's confidant as well as maidservant, and tongues might well wag.

And more: his bed, where she sat as easily as on her father's throne, would carry her scent for days, and it would drive him mad.

"Bane, my old friend," said Talia, impatient and teasing, so he rose to face her. "My _noble husband_ the king is dead-" the mockery in her voice astounded him, and he chastised himself for having believed that she went to his bed willingly- "and while I cannot yet announce myself the mother of his child, within a month I will have the Regent either kneeling at my feet or impaled on a spike."

"And do you bear his child?"

"One child is as good as another," she replied flippantly. "Even if it's a bit late, I can have it said that I'm ill, and display the child when it eventually appears. I may, however, need a father for this bastard of mine, and if my courses run this month I will have great need of a true and great-hearted friend."

She smiled at him, and he felt his heart bursting.

"When we make our move on Gordon," she went on, "I will need you at my side. He will almost certainly resist, and it is my hope that he will shy from provoking a man of your... _stature_." She colored a little, and he felt his throat dry up. "I will reward you, Bane, as I always have."

He scarcely heard her. Blood roared in his ears and his body tingled. In all their years together, she had never even _hinted_... never something like this...

"I have one reward for you now," she said, smiling; her maidservant, encouraged by her excitement, took her hand and squeezed it furtively. "I have requested a bodyguard for you, and in his _wisdom_ the Regent has granted my petition. You will have a man to stand watch while you sleep, and to act as your valet and manservant while you wake. I asked for only the best, Bane."

"A manservant," repeated Bane, still struggling to gather her words into meaningful sentences.

"He will be yours to do with as you wish," said Talia, a curious emphasis in her voice. "And I suspect, my friend, that you will find yourself brimming with creativity."

"Who," said Bane, though suspicion had begun to dawn on him.

"Your noble enemy," laughed Talia, rising to leave. "Sir John-of-the-Robin, of course. Sir Blake."


	2. Chapter 2

Bane went about his day mechanically, Talia's words ringing in his ears. He felt as if she had spoken to him in some code; he could not piece together her phrasing in any way that made sense.

As he trained in the armsyard, grunting with the weight of a massive polearm that taxed even his might, he returned again to the concept of _manservant_, the most perplexing part of all this madness. He had squires, two of them, good lads who stood at the edge of the yard even now. He wore little armor in battle- he was a commander of men, not a mere brawler, and when he killed it was swift and sure and brutal- and he made no pretense at luxury. He took his meals in the common hall, at the high table (though here in Bruce's palace he was seated near the end); he kept a simple billet that needed only occasional dusting by the palace maids; and no man now living was foolish enough to make an attempt on his life while he slept.

Only one solution presented itself: she intended for him to humiliate Blake, perhaps to beat him or otherwise punish him.

Had it been any other enemy of his, Bane would have rejoiced at this. He and Talia were kindred souls, fierce creatures who played with what they caught. Bane was no man to mete punishment for months and years, preferring the brief glimpse of hope and the painful death to Lord al-Ghul's spider-plots of self-destruction and torment, and he had presumed that Talia felt the same. She had, after all, dispatched her husband swiftly and cruelly, with poisoned wine rather than years of manipulation.

Perhaps he had been wrong.

* * *

None of this reverie prepared him for what he found when he opened his door that night, sated on bread and ale and exhausted from a day of training his men.

Armor hid a great deal about a man, and without his armor, Sir Blake was slim and lissome, a man of words and mind rather than arms and steel. True, John of the Robin had not been knighted for his prowess on the field, but rather for his abilities in tactics and intrigue; but this tried Bane's soul, looking down at this black-eyed lad with his well-groomed hair and imagining how best to injure him.

Blake could have been one of his own lads, the orphans and thieves of Lord al-Ghul's lands, fed and trained and raised into dangerous, dedicated militia. It took away Bane's stomach for violence.

Which left him wondering what, exactly, one was supposed to do with a manservant. Was there something about dressing? Did he fold laundry and make beds? "What in the gods' name are you here for, Sir Blake?"

"I confess," said Blake, eyes searching the floor, "that I do not yet understand my duties." Gods, he sounded insolent, angry as any boy Bane had ever trained. "I have been told to watch for your safety while you sleep, but I'm also informed that I may carry no weapon as long as I am in your service, which- according to your lady- may be a very long time indeed. So I suppose one of my duties involves blunting the blade of any man fool enough to attack you by burying it in my heart."

"Right," said Bane after a moment's pause, staring at Blake in amusement. "Help me get my boots off."

"As you like," muttered Blake, going to one knee, and Bane sighed and cuffed him in the head.

"Address me correctly, _John_, or things will go poorly for you here."

"As you like, _Sir Bane_," shot back Blake, having recovered his balance, and while Bane worked his left foot free Blake stripped his right one.

While Blake set to polishing Bane's boots (perhaps there were some good things about this arrangement), Bane shucked off his vest and trews, only stopping at his breechclout when he head a faint sound behind him. He turned to find Blake staring blank-faced at his boots, polishing as though his life depended upon it, white as a sheet.

"Gods, boy, rest easy. I may strike you, but I'll not mount you like a mare." It was a joke, but now Blake's ears flamed red, and Bane wondered exactly what rumors about him had spread.

No help for it. A man made enemies; a man who slew his enemies made tales. And a man who slept in his breechclout awoke in a sweat. He stripped the last cloth from his body, pointedly ignoring Blake's flared nostrils and shaking hands, and stretched out on his large cot.

"I don't care what kind of watch you keep," he said as an afterthought. "But keep it quiet, lad, and if you take a dagger to the heart for me you'd best not bloody the place up while I sleep."

"I'm not singing you lullabies," snarled Blake, and he let the boots drop with a ringing thud as he stood to snuff the lamp.

* * *

John knew better than to spite Bane immediately by making noise, but he could not prevent himself tossing and turning. He had half expected to be dead by now, or beaten bloody and left to groan on the floor as a sort of night-music for his new master. Instead he lay here on a bedroll near the brazier, listening to the metallic rasp of Bane's breathing and struggling not to recall to his mind the horrifying majesty of Bane's naked body.

He was immense, and beautiful in his dreadful way; the muscles of his back rose and fell as he worked his arms out of that enormous leather breastplate, half-turning in John's mind's eye to reveal the thickness of his neck and the power of his thighs. And the- and the rest of it, the coarse hair of his groin and the shaft that nestled in it, the muscular curve of his buttocks-

John felt a stab of guilt as he wrenched his mind away, forcing himself back to painful thoughts of his lost king. Bruce's shoulders had been mighty as well, his mouth wry and curling, his eyes kind and sad; there should be no room in John's heart for this barbaric interloper, this loyal servant of the realm's greatest foe.

But Bane had not butchered John's king. And for all John's strengths, he was a man afflicted with strange desires, and it seemed that even now- with his hopeless love dead and in the grave- he was not to be free of his lusts.

Beyond him, in the dark, Bane turned onto his side, and the movement of his enormous arms filled John's ears with the unbearable sounds of skin against skin. A moment later, he raised a hand to scratch around the edge of the mask, which he had not removed even to sleep- John had wondered about that. There was a deep yawn, and then a guttural moan of comfort that set John gritting his teeth and struggling not to respond physically.

This would be a long night, and many long nights awaited. John buried his hands in his bedroll to keep them from wandering, and resigned himself to a sleepless, miserable night.


	3. Chapter 3

John woke with the first hint of dawn, as always, and sat bolt upright in shock and confusion before remembering where he was, and the cruel turn that his life had taken. Across the room, Sir Bane's breathing rose and feel, steady and even; one of his massive arms hung over the side of the bed.

Fortunately for John, at some point in the night Bane had managed to wind his linen sheets around himself, and so the torment of bare flesh was reduced to tolerable standards. John dressed in hurried silence, toes curling against the icy floor, then stoked the brazier and slipped out to find breakfast.

Some perverse remnants of his desire to do his job, and do it well, compelled him to load a tray with a fair spread of bread, crumbling white cheese, new lager and plum chutney, a breakfast for his new master. He did, after all, have an appearance to keep up, and the Commander-

Gordon had made it abundantly clear to him that he suspected al-Ghul, Bane, and possibly even al-Ghul's daughter of misdeed. Most of the realm took Bruce's apparent death by fit as a romantic tragedy, but Gordon hadn't risen to his position of power and influence by taking everything at face value. And when the Lady Talia had placed her request with the Commander, Gordon had seized the opportunity to place his keen-eyed spy into the private wing of the al-Ghul entourage.

And John had gone willingly, after his meeting with the Lady Talia. He did not accept her public demeanor of modesty and quiet any more than did the Commander, but he could not suspect her of betraying Bruce.

_I know what love looks like on a man's face_, she'd said. _I cannot fault anyone on this earth for loving him, Sir Blake. But when I was weeping in my marriage bed over the corpse of my husband, you threw yourself on his body like a jilted bride, and because I know you loved him- _don't_ try to deny it, Blake, I am no innocent maiden- I know you will understand that the thought of you breathing makes me sick._

I know this is pure emotion, and only a fool acts upon the heart without weighing the mind as well. But I can never know what truly passed between you and my husband, and because of that I can never truly trust you. For your own protection, Sir Blake, from my own jealousy and my own spite, I want you under the eye of my loyal man. And I want your word that you will serve him well to earn back my favor. I would hate for your reputation, so long preserved, to be tarnished; and I would hate to accuse you of seeking, in your jealousy, to prevent me from having what you could not have.

She was a formidable foe, but John could not see the path that led to such vindictive widowhood from any false and murderous passion. And if his dedication to the service of Sir Bane kept him from his usual investigations... well, there were other questions to be answered now, and perhaps his beloved king's memory might be served better by a keen-eyed servant in the enemy's wing than by an overworked knight with a kitchen-boy's knowledge of the palace's nooks and crannies.

Lost in his ponderings, John nearly dropped his tray of food when he trod, quite by accident, upon the hem of the Lady Talia's bosom handmaiden, the fair and innocent Selina.

* * *

If Selina had been any of the other maids who scurried around the Lady al-Ghul's wing, she would have taken a nasty fall when her frock snapped tight around her waist and slung her backward. She was, however, no regular maid, and as her back bowed into a bridge, her knees crouched and splayed, and her thighs tightened like springs; as soon as his foot released her, she sprang back upright, ready to twist into self-defense.

Perhaps she should have taken that fall, she reflected, when her assailant was revealed to be nothing more than Bane's slim boy-knight. Too late; now he had affixed his sly gaze to her, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

"Beg pardon, messire," she said, affecting her most shy and breathless tone, but as she hurried away she saw his reflection in the glazed red tiles at the end of the hall, watching her with interest. As she neared the corner, he pivoted on one heel and followed her, hands casually tucked into the loose pockets of his trews.

Damn.

She doubled back through the connecting room between this hall and the next, but no sooner had she reached the stairs than she saw the flash of a white shirt on the landing below; somehow he had come out of the servants' staircase, and he pretended not to notice her as she brushed past him, eyes lowered. She hadn't even known there was an opening to the servants' stair on that level.

She had no time for this; she had a report to give, and Auld Fox would mistrust her if she tarried. There was one place she could safely shake him, and she was confident that she could escape any delay once within.

Selina paused in the linen cupboard; she could no longer hear or see him, but she knew he followed, if only by the prickle at the back of her neck. She loaded her arms with fresh linen and scurried out, glimpsing his unmistakeable silhouette leaned in a doorway, and made her way to the back staircase, from whence she sailed down the main hallway of the wing (a tall, cloistered passage with one side open to sunlight through glazed windows, and the other side dotted with doors and tapestries). He followed her, swifter now, guessing her aim, but long before he stepped within earshot she had overtaken the guards outside Lady Talia's room.

She needed only a nod, a slight shift of the eyes, to alert them; Sir Blake perceived this and paused, knowing he could not follow. The guards stared at him, openly suspicious, and as Selina entered her lady's suite, Sir Blake turned on his heel and strode away.

Lady Talia was not within; likely she was at council, this late in the morning. Selina dumped her armful of muslin unceremoniously in a chair and slipped out through the maids' quarters, which opened around the corner of the hall and were guarded by only one man.

She was more careful after this, taking the servants' stair (apparently it opened behind one of the tapestries, a strange thing for a knight of the realm to know, though Lady Talia had warned her that Sir Blake was a canny soul) and ducking into the solarium to let a noisy group of laundresses past.

In this way she found herself at last in the butler's pantry, a dim closet full of oak tuns with a single, ill-lit, sparsely spread table at the center.

"Hello, Alfred," she murmured, slipping into a chair opposite the castle steward.

"You're late," said Alfred, with a fatherly tone of no real disappointment.

"I was nearly followed," she replied, looking back at the door. "Your Sir Blake is a fine lad with a quick mind. Knows his way around the castle, too. Are we certain we don't want him with us?"

"Blake has his duties," said Alfred, pouring her a glass of wine before topping his own off. "Dangerous duties enough, without that burden of suspicion. And he is a fiery lad, scarcely free of the rages of youth; he would not bide well in patience. You were wise to avoid him."

Her report was succinct; she knew Talia to be communicating with her father by occult means, locking herself in her boudoir alone with her powders and potions to converse with al-Ghul in secret. When Selina inquired, Talia laughed and said it was no great intrigue, that a sorcerer's daughter was allowed a few beauty tricks; and yet al-Ghul's voice could be heard muttering, deep and masculine, by an attentive listener.

"So the rumors of her quarrel with her father are untrue," mused Alfred. "One hears such things... and perhaps one is meant to hear them, to distance the Lady from her father's influence in the public eye.

There was a sudden, distinct smell in the air, a rain smell that was alien to the dark must of the butler's closet; and Auld Fox appeared, kind eyes twinkling under his mop of white hair, so naturally that Selina took a few seconds to be unsettled by his sudden arrival. The king's wizard had a way of materializing that made Selina suspect he had been there all along, somehow concealed so that the eye slipped right over him.

"Auld Fox," she greeted him, watching the old man slip into the third chair and reach for the wine. "When will you teach me that trick?"

"When I trust you," retorted Auld Fox, in his irritatingly polite way.

Alfred gave Selina's report to him, eyes crinkling at his old friend with amusement (which irritated Selina endlessly, given that Auld Fox so brazenly suspected her of subterfuge). When he was finished, Auld Fox sat back and nodded at Selina.

"Back to your lady's service," he dismissed her, and her mouth fell open.

"Am I to have no part in this discussion?"

"You mistake me, miss, you have contributed greatly to this conversation. But your time is up, and you will soon be missed."

"Horseshite," she said, rising from the table indignantly and turning to leave.

"Ah-ah-ah," said Auld Fox, raising a finger. "Your pockets, miss?"

With a sigh, Selina withdrew a cloth-wrapped bundle from her pocket and tossed it to Alfred, who opened it to reveal a lapis statuette that had, until recently, decorated the third sideboard in the great hall. "A girl's got to have her prizes once in a while," she complained.

"My trust would be a great prize indeed," said Auld Fox regretfully, and he leaned to pat Alfred's hand as the steward looked at the figurine in mild disappointment. "On with you now, miss."

She almost regretted not seeing Sir Blake on her way back to Lady Talia's chambers; she would have relished the chance to quarrel.


	4. Chapter 4

Given that John had fully expected to die bleeding within the first hours of his newfound servitude, there was a certain bone-quaking relief that came over him when he awoke on his eighth morning as Bane's manservant and listened to the deep, even rasp of Sir Bane's breathing.

He could not deny that he still feared the man. He kept his own counsel in most things, and acted with merciless resolution in service of his lady's safety. Two days before, a would-be assassin had been found skulking in the kitchens; Bane questioned the man (scarcely more than boy, and pissing with fear), his rich voice reassuring and just faintly wrong, stroking the lad's shoulder in a skin-crawling mockery of soothing before simply twisting his neck like a key in a lock and letting the corpse crumple.

And he had yet to see Bane's face, though every night he averted his eyes as the man stripped his enormous bulk and sprawled out on his cot like a collapsing mountain. Bane ate; but John was not permitted in the room while he ate. Was there a mechanism to the mask, a hatch that permitted the entry of food? Or did Bane wait until he was alone in his room to strip away the leather and metal and devour his food like a normal man? Was he scarred, wax-skinned from burns, gashed and gouged from battle, or was he merely a man in a sorcerer's mask, with lips and teeth like any other man?

Three days after that, he summoned his courage and asked: "Why do you wear the mask?"

"Pain," replied his master, as though the word both amused and disappointed him.

"They- the men in the yard say it gives you powers," continued John, in the grip of fear like a rabbit, but hungry to know.

"Perhaps it does," mused Bane. "Do we live in pain, unknowing, waiting for chance or fate to lift that pain and let us be men again? Or are some of us born to greater pain than others?"

"We are all born to pain," responded John, his fear blending with memories of past fears and the dull constant certainty of grief. "Even hope is pain, stored for later."

"Well said," replied Bane. "And some of us have hoped more, and filled our storehouses for winter."

The next day after that, his lumpy bedroll was replaced with a second cot.

* * *

Bane regretted the cot within a single night's span. He retired to his room exhausted, sore-muscled from swinging weighted weapons in the training yard; worse, he had spent much of the day drilling his contingent (the mere twenty men he had been permitted to bring into Bruce's palace), and while they still adored him fiercely, they had neglected their training of late.

And now he lay on his cot, struggling to sleep while every few minutes the miserable creak of Blake's cot reminded him that his manservant was nearby, and awake.

Perhaps it was old training that kept Bane awake, too cautious to drift away with an enemy- no matter how deferent to his needs- so close by. Or perhaps he was still charged with the frustration of re-drilling months' worth of work with his lads.

Either way, he was grateful when Blake seemed to find a comfortable spot, and he had nearly fallen asleep when he heard a different creak from Blake's cot: a rhythmic creak, just the slightest shifting of the wooden joints.

Bane found himself instantly wide awake, frozen in place, peering through the dark toward his manservant's dim figure. The faintest glow from the brazier traced golden threads of illumination over Blake's shoulders and chest, touched his dark hair with bronze (he had turned his face to the wall, although the rest of his body lay supine)... and made the flicker of movement apparent, the unmistakeable gestures of a man seeking relief by his own hand.

Bane had been to war; he was a soldier, and soldiers knew the unspoken code, the tacit agreement of feigned ignorance. A man needed relief, sometimes, and it was a breach of propriety to call attention to it, or to acknowledge it at all. And Bane had never been one to seek out another man's flesh, to pretend that hard muscles were the same as soft skin, the way men sometimes did after battle. One could not maintain discipline that way; to share flesh with a man, knowing that he might someday be a deserter to be slaughtered, or that Bane himself might need to lash him half-flayed next week for a breach of conduct...

Now, though, he lay watching, heart pounding, a sickening thrill rising at the base of his spine. Across the room, Blake let out a shuddering breath, and as his hand moved faster under the draped sheet, the skin-on-skin whisper rose to Bane's ears.

Bane could not move. There was a poetry to this, the way Blake's slim shoulders tensed and relaxed, like the grace of a man in battle. And more; it kindled something dark inside Bane, some aggressive need that stripped away the careful structures he had begun to build around Blake.

He had treated Blake, his enemy, as if he were one of Bane's recruits. He had been polite, only cuffing him when discipline was necessary; he had almost begun to look at Blake as a protege to be trained, a possession to be polished and maintained for maximum usefulness.

Now he watched Blake's head fall back, revealing his profile; Blake's lips parted, wet in the brazier-light, and his eyes and brow tensed into a pleading expression. He was a beautiful thing, Bane realized, and his beauty was nothing Bane could control or even touch, and Bane's chest burned with that knowledge.

Finally Blake pulled at himself frantically, a flurry of creaks and groans coming from the rickety cot, and a low, helpless moan spilled over Blake's lips as he bucked up into his hand and spilled his seed. The scent of him filled the air, clean and masculine, and Bane felt his own cock twitch in sympathy- _how long had he been hard, watching this_- before Blake slumped back into relaxation, breathing already slowing into sleep.

Blake's cot didn't creak again, but Bane still lay awake long into the night, wrestling with this strange violent desire, struggling to fit Blake back into the convenient mold of enemy-manservant. There was no safe place for anyone in this part of him; even Talia, lovely and perfect, he kept separate from his lusts. Talia was pure, an angel with a clever heart; this thing that Blake had stirred inside him was dark and angry and possessive, and it burned in his belly and made him ache in his balls.

Blake would suffer for this.

* * *

"My lady," called Selina, tapping at the door of Lady Talia's boudoir. "My lady, a message from the Commander-"

The door creaked open, revealing an empty room. Selina paused, brow creasing; she had _seen_ Talia enter, not twenty minutes ago, and she knew her mistress had not slipped out- not with Selina embroidering on the lounge outside the door, quietly pretending not to listen. This time, no voices could be heard, and no sulfurous scent curled under the door.

And yet, the Lady Talia was missing. Selina made a quick round of the boudoir, checking behind tapestries and under furniture; and finding no sign of her mistress, she went out into the bedchamber, calling as she went.

The bedchamber was empty; the writing nook and the wardrobe-closet likewise. Selina lowered herself onto the lounge, confused and not a little afraid, and jumped like a hare when the door of the boudoir suddenly closed.

Lady Talia stood with her back braced against the door, a high flush in her cheeks, staring at Selina with wild eyes. "You disobeyed me," she said, but her voice was strained with some emotion that only touched anger at the edges.

"There was a message," replied Selina, lowering her eyes. "Urgent, from the Commander. You didn't answer- I thought you might be hurt."

"I wasn't hurt," said Lady Talia, distantly, and she began stripping away her clothing, letting fine silk and muslin crumple on the floor as she crossed to the bed and climbed into it.

"My lady, are you well?" Selina rose from her couch and gathered up the fallen clothing; this was nothing like her fierce beautiful mistress. She half expected Talia to weep, but Talia simply lay on her back atop the duvet, arms spread out, face terribly empty.

The shift in Selina's arms was wet, sticky with some milky-clear fluid. Selina dropped it.

"You've been with Bane," she said, keeping her voice neutral; inside, an unwanted torrent of emotion welled up, anger and nausea and... jealousy? She could _not_ be jealous; she was no mere lady's maid, smitten with her mistress, reading too much into the acts of relief that Talia requested. She was good with her mind as well as her fingers; she was a rational creature, not given to love.

"Bane," said Talia, with a hollow chuckle. "Don't be ridiculous. I could no more... he loves me, Selina. I am a wicked, wicked woman, but even I have my limits."

"Then who," said Selina. Her hands itched with the knowledge of a stranger's semen, and she clenched her fists.

"Selina, my gods, I would tell you. I should tell you," said Talia, and she struggled upright, the numbness in her voice dissolving into bitter regret. "Please, please understand me: I can say nothing without putting you in danger, and I- I will not sacrifice you, Selina, for something so foolish and wretched as this. You know I must have a child. Does it matter so much whose child it is?"

Selina shook her head, not trusting her voice. _I would keep this secret, of all your secrets_, she wanted to say. _I report to Auld Fox to keep you safe, to preserve your rule, to guard your body- as I have since we were maidens playing at kisses in the garden, since we thought of kingdoms and thrones as games for men, since you rode on your great brute knight's shoulders like a prince on his steed, laughing in the sun while I learned in the shadows. And now you speak of sacrifice?_

She knew that once, when Ra's al-Ghul was a young man in hiding rather than a dread sorcerer, Talia had been a child born in prison, protected and rescued by Sir Bane. There were rumors of rape and torture, whispers of Bane's inhumanly disfigured face; but Selina knew by bittersweet experience that Talia did not make love like a woman accustomed to violation, and she suspected that Bane had borne more torment in Talia's defense than he would ever tell.

And if Talia at least held Bane's love sacred enough that she would not defile it completely, it was small comfort, now that Selina understood: during all these years of loyal servitude, her lady had seen her as an asset, a loose end with too many secrets. Only now had she counted the cost; only now, with a man's seed in her belly and a kingdom at her feet, had she understood what _loose ends_ meant, and called it _sacrifice_.


	5. Chapter 5

The greatest indignity of servitude, to John's mind, was that Bane needed no manservant, and John found himself at loose ends for many hours of the day. At first he tried to beg duties from the Commander; but Gordon had no intention of expending his only spy in the al-Ghul wing upon armory details and requisition councils. By now, John had established a vague structure to his days: regular meals, and food brought for Bane; an hour's run around the decorative battlements of the palace in the mid-morning, exchanging awkward greetings with the men he'd once trained beside; care and maintenance of Sir Bane's armor and equipment in the afternoon; and an evening's worth of correspondence and study, to keep his tactical mind sharp and his hard-won connections active. It was no challenging schedule for a man accustomed to the hardships of campaign.

His proximity to Sir Bane complicated this, filling his too-broad idle stretches with unwholesome thoughts: powerful shoulders and sinewed hands, a mighty barrel chest, a metal mask and blue, perceptive eyes. Worse, Bane himself seemed to suffer an excess of free time, and preferred to maintain his own weaponry in the privacy of his room, where John would perch cross-legged on his cot, working beeswax into the leather of Bane's armor straps while the scent of Bane himself- sweat and lye soap and a strange medicinal astringency- soaked into John's very skin, until every waking moment was a torment of scent-memory and daydreaming.

And Bane began to speak to him, after the first month; simple questions in the beginning, questions about John's daily activities, and then- skipping past the events and thoughts of John's last five years, which would only serve to remind both of them about their enmity- they went on directly to debate the nature of war and humanity and government.

Bane believed that all men were corrupt, base animals feigning conscience to avoid punishment. John questioned this, convicted that men might continually fail in their attempts to be good, but that their longing to be good must eternally surpass their abilities, or they would cease to strive for anything at all.

"And you believe," Bane said, resting his back against the wall and watching John keenly (which John felt like a weight upon himself, and fought against the flush that rose across his collarbone and up his throat), "that men have not forsaken the pursuit of goodness? You, who have been my enemy, and seen what my men do to yours when we take them, and have ordered the torture and execution of mine?"

"I sleep at your feet," said John, cursing himself for his vulnerability, eyes fierce on his hands' work. "And yet every night we close our eyes in this room, and every morning we awake uninjured. Have we not found some variety of peace?"

"Fear of punishment," retorted Bane, "and desire for reward. If there were no consequence for it, you would have slit my throat the first night we slept."

"The death of a man is not a consequence?"

"Not to some."

"So a consequence does not exist unless everyone agrees upon it?"

Bane set back to the process of sharpening his sword. "Do you dissect everything so thoroughly, so... distantly?"

"On the contrary," muttered John, "I am subject to every whim of thought my mind sees fit to wrack itself with."

* * *

After that, John busied himself with the only subterfuge he could find in the al-Ghul wing: hunting Selina. She was, to all appearances, a devoted lady's-maid, staying most of the time in Lady Talia's quarters (which were, as always, utterly off-limits to John) and sailing through the halls with deft and diligent purpose when she emerged. Had John's curiosity not been piqued, he would have never suspected her of a moment's plotting.

And yet, now that she had shaken him off so effectively, now that he had seen the satisfaction and the cool victory on her face, her innocent behavior made him even more curious. On the fourth day of his pursuit, he was paid well for his suspicion; he lost her for almost an hour, and only discovered her by accident, passing the dairy-shed and hearing her voice.

She was reporting to Alfred, the castle steward, and she appeared to be nearly finished with it; as he listened, she seemed to be implying that the Lady Talia was lying with Sir Bane.

_Falsehood_, thought John, _he would have told me_, and it was such a curiously intimate and terrifying idea that he nearly missed Selina's departure and had to hurry to catch up with her. Indeed, as he rounded the corner, he found her closing with a set of the Lady Talia's personal guards, and he wondered what on earth Lady Talia's personal guards were doing near the dairy-shed. Perhaps Selina was being tailed by more than one person?

But as Selina passed them, she spoke to them, low-voiced and furtive; and within moments they had fixed themselves upon John. He smiled as they approached him, spreading his hands to indicate that he meant no harm, and a moment later he doubled over as a gauntleted fist sank into his abdomen.

Behind him he heard dairy-maids gasp and scatter, but he hardly cared, staggering with one hand outflung and the other grasping his stomach. "What," he began, as soon as he could breathe, and the guard hit him again, and then another guard drew back a fist and caught him in the ribs.

At last they drew back, letting him sprawl against the plastered corner of the dairy-yard, gasping and spitting blood. It was not a beating intended to kill, he realized, but they certainly meant to leave him incapacitated, incapable of following Selina. Were they protecting her, a maid who told her lady's secrets to the steward? Or did Talia have other secrets she wished to protect?

"It's not-" he began, and immediately they set into him again, fists and feet connecting with no real ferocity; but John was one man to their four, slim and bookish, and wearing shirt and hose against their steel-and-leather armor, and they were really having an embarrassingly easy time of it-

Except that Bane appeared, a mountain in leather and steel, blotting out the sunlight itself as he seized the two closest to him. "Explain yourselves," he roared, and John felt a quiver of pride and fear at once in his belly as he watched them quail.

"He's bothering the Lady Talia's maid," said one, braver than the others, and Bane reached out and took him by the shoulder, a dangerously friendly gesture.

"And so you've taken it upon yourselves to beat my manservant bloody?" Bane's voice was gentle, resonant, smiling; the guard in his grip shrank, and John exulted. Bane was Talia's most loyal servant, her most trusted; let some wretched pack of dogs raise a hand to-

But they _did_, all at once pulling weapons (dull maces, thank the gods, and not sabers, so they did not intend to kill) and throwing themselves at him like madmen from a cliff.

The altercation ended predictably; four armed men against Bane's bare fists was a painfully imbalanced battle, and Bane simply batted them away like pups, breaking ribs and crushing noses, sustaining a few injuries but, on the whole, living up to his reputation as an unstoppable flesh-rending monster. He lifted an opponent and threw him, bodily, against the wall; his arms moved like uprooting oaks, fists and forearms catching blows and plowing through them, and John watched in a delirium of pain and awe and lust as Bane laid waste to his assailants and, amidst the groaning ruin of Talia's inexplicably violent guards, slung one arm under John's shoulders and hefted him bodily.

"I can't believe they attacked you," said John, to keep himself from swooning like a maid under the sickening heat and rush of Bane's arm around him. "Surely the Lady's men know better than to strike her favored warrior."

"Am I still her favored warrior?" Bane's voice was thick and bitter and full of pain out of proportion to his wounds.

John fell silent until they reached Bane's quarters, understanding; no woman would order a man she loved to be beaten.

* * *

The water in Sir Bane's basin was fresh, but not warm; John made some show of attempting to retrieve linens from the cupboard, but Bane pushed him back down on his cot, stripped the muslin sheeting from his own bed, and tore it into four strips with his bare hands.

They bathed their wounds in grim silence, staining the water with rusty tendrils of blood. John found his hair matted with blood over the ear, where his split eyebrow had bled freely across his temple, and hissed as he dabbed at the wound; Bane made a sound, something rumbling and amused, and John glanced up to see the man sopping blood from a blow to his chest that had shattered the skin and the pale flesh under it like pottery.

_His mask protects him from pain_, thought John, and then he heard the pained intake of breath as Bane carefully shucked away his vest, and watched Bane abandon the process of removing those leather straps and begin working at the straps of his mask, loosening them where they dug into a deep purpling bruise on his cheek.

As the mask slipped, John could not tear his eyes away; and for a moment he glimpsed the edge of something, a pink-and-silver stretch of damaged flesh, and he understood at last that the mask was not a protection from bodily harm but proof against some already-inflicted wound.

His wounds seemed shallow beside this; the muslin in his hands fell away, and he rose and made the few steps between the two of them, and like a good manservant fell to unbuckling the straps of Bane's vest. This time, Bane did not stop him, though John's chest heaved from his bruised ribs and John's hands were sticky on his master's sides from the blood and dirt of the dairy-yard; at last the vest pulled away, revealing that broad and muscled chest that John remembered in his daydreams. Only now, fresh welting bruises crisscrossed his skin, sharp impacts of leather straps under heavy blows and occasional bloody gashes of split skin.

"Gods above us," breathed John, taking the soaked muslin from Bane's grasp to gently dab at the wounds. "You have the constitution of an ox."

"And yet," said Bane ruefully, "in fact I am only a man," and he groaned as John's fingers moved on his wounded flesh, and groaned again with relief as John set to work on his mask.

John feared, at first, that Bane would strike him away, even half-sprawled across his stripped bed with John kneeling above him; he feared too that he would take away the mask and reduce Bane to screaming, but Bane reached up for a moment and pressed at his mask, then relaxed and let John peel away the leather and steel piece by piece.

"A high dose," he said, "like the one I take before my meals," and that answered many questions and raised a few more, but John worked at it still until it came free. His fingers brushed the impressed lines on Bane's skin, at the edges of the mask, and Bane's eyes flicked up to catch his own, more human and vulnerable than John had ever seen. Then he closed his eyes and sighed, resigned, and John lifted away the mask.

Beneath it was a person, a scarred face, puckered slash marks across the mouth and both cheeks- a ritual scarring, or a deliberate and vengeful one. Where the scars went, the flesh was poorly healed, pink and angry; where the scars were not, shockingly full lips parted, pale sunless skin stretched, a strong but shattered nose stood proud. He was not an easy man to look on.

To John, he was beautiful.

He tore himself away, setting the mask aside, businesslike and purposeful; but Bane kept his eyes closed while John dressed his wounds, and even when John sat back to survey his work Bane would not meet his eyes, instead stiffly beginning the process of sitting up to remove his boots.

"Don't be ridiculous," said John, and ignoring his own protesting ribs, he knelt to remove Bane's boots as he had every night for the last month and a half, glad for the opportunity to distance his hungry eyes from Bane's naked torso.

He had removed the first boot and was working at the second when Bane spoke; his voice was strangely clear, still honey-thick and masculine but unmuffled by the mask. "You see now why I eat alone," he said. "And why I sleep alone."

"If the Lady Talia disdains you for your face, she is a madwoman," muttered John, struggling with the bootlaces. "Men who campaign bear scars; if every soldier's wife turned him out of bed for his wounds, our barracks would empty within a week."

"I do not think she sees me as a man enough to notice my scars," responded Bane, with more rue than bitterness.

"And have you spoken to her about this? About your scars, or anything else?"

Bane laughed, a funerary knell. "It is never so _simple_, John." _John_. "Words pierce like darts, crippling the subtlest plans. If I declared myself, what good would it do? Shall I remove her strongest weapon and replace it with a rose? You of all people should know-"

"I, of all people?" John sat back on his haunches, fear and anger kindling inside him.

"I spoke to my lady," said Bane; now that John was looking up at him, the movement of those lips was mesmerizing, the line of muscle and flesh on the strange face a puzzle of new expression and tangled scar. "I asked her how she compelled you, my enemy, to serve me, and she answered."

"And what did she answer?" The room seemed to have gone cold; blood roared in John's ears. He was found out, and the word would surely spread- but if Talia saw fit to break her secret-keeping, her blackmail would soon hold no sway over him.

"She said you were a man who loved his king," said Bane, and there was something in his voice both understanding and terribly sad. "She said... she _implied_ that you wished you were a maid, so that you might lie with him."

"The Lady Talia is a fool," said John, feeling a flush rise into his cheeks. "I would no sooner be a maid than you would."

"Milady is... _naive_." Amusement tinged Bane's voice, not the deadly detached interest that preceded a beating but a genuine smile. "Though I fear that turning into a maid might not help me closer to her bed."

John returned to his boot, ducking his head to hide the painful blush that would not stop spreading. The image of Bane in anyone's bed- it was easy to imagine the rise and push of that body, the tense and roll of his back... Unthinking, he worked his fingers into Bane's calf muscle, easing the knotted flesh while he stripped away the boot. He froze when Bane groaned again, a sound of bone-deep pleasure.

"Pardon," rumbled Bane, a ridiculous word from that powerful body, incongruous spilled from those lips. John sat for another moment, stunned and reeling; then he pulled the boot away with a single determined motion and stood.

"Your trousers," he said, and he could hear the danger in his voice, and he knew Bane could hear it too. And yet Bane raised himself up, belly tightening as his hips lifted, and John divested him of his trousers and set to washing the wounds on his left thigh with trembling hands.

Some secret tensed between them, an echo of John's fear and Bane's loneliness, and Bane lay carefully and absolutely silent while John washed the twin gashes on the outside of his thigh; but John could not stop his hands from lingering, and as his palm smoothed against the muscle above the knee a sound escaped Bane's mouth, a hungry sound that set John shaking in earnest.

"Pardon," said Bane again, "I am not... I am not accustomed," but the sound of him was broken and John felt himself succumbing, felt himself pulled forward, felt his knees buckling and knew himself absolutely lost as he found himself lying across Bane's thighs with his lips pressed to the skin and the strength of Bane's belly, the stretch of muscle and the light dust of hair just below Bane's navel.

"Not accustomed," said John, lips dragging against Bane's skin as he spoke; under his breath and his touch, Bane did not exactly quiver, but there was a tightness to him, a shallowness to his breathing, and John took encouragement from this and laid his palms flat against Bane's skin: one across the breadth of his thigh, one upon the muscle at the base of Bane's ribs.

And still, under his touch, under the intimacy of each breath unfurling like a banner across his belly, Bane lay still- Bane, who could crush the life from John without any great effort, who had broken necks with his bare hands, whose prowess in war was so great that John's beloved king had been driven to marry Bane's princess to prevent the destruction of his realm- and he now lay shivering like a warhorse longing for battle under this utterly wrong and shameful touch.

"I do love her," said Bane at last, and John practically tasted the confusion and anguish in his voice, recognized the bitter flavor of it from his own years of longing and solitude, and he allowed himself a laugh that was actually a sob.

"I know what it is to love and be unloved," whispered John against Bane's belly, and he let his hand smooth its way up Bane's thigh until his fingertips brushed the crinkling hair at the hem of his breechclout. John turned his head, letting his cheek rest where his mouth had been, and with his hands he followed the path of his eyes: over the straining cloth that scarcely disguised Bane's heavy arousal, flickering across the skin at the edges of the cloth, around again to cup and slightly squeeze and feel the heft of it, the mass.

"You worship me like a god," said Bane, deep and wondering. "How can you... _see_ me and not loathe me?"

"I am no princess," murmured John. "I am a manservant, and I serve you." And with this he found the steel in his spine at last, rose and arranged himself and stripped away the last shreds of modesty from Bane's body, and let his hand at last stroke along the shaft, massive and well-formed as the rest of him.

Bane groaned, a voice of torment and pleasure, and his hands fisted into the ticking of his bed. He spoke no words as John stroked him and let his free hand wander across the expanse of scarred and beautiful skin; but John knew the words that Bane could not speak, surprise at the pleasure to be had in this and denial of any true meaning and fear that he would be changed by this and fear that this would ever, ever stop. And still his groans went on, rich as music on a winter's night, thrumming and burning in John's belly until Bane's voice itself seemed like some ethereal hand upon his own hardening length.

"May I kiss you," said John, and Bane flung one mighty arm across his face in alarm, but he did not draw back and John was done waiting, done watching and hoping, and he leaned down to lay a mock-chaste kiss upon the crown of Bane's cock. This earned him a staggered gasp, and the next kiss as well, and then he began licking and watched a pearl of clear fluid bead up at the tip and roll down the velvet-soft skin- only to be seized by John's tongue, and followed by John's entire mouth as Bane nearly rose from the bed with the force of his pleasure and shock.

"_John_." It should have been a roar, with the wracking spasms that chased through Bane's body; instead it was a moan, broken and fearful, repeated over and over as John worked his mouth upon his master's flesh until Bane's hips began to jerk and his head rolled back against the ticking, that beautiful flawed mouth dark and gasping and those blue eyes tensed shut in a charade of pain.

As John felt the tremors building under his ministration, he finally let his hand stray, seeking relief from the agony of _want_ and _yes_ that filled him; he had no sooner taken himself in hand, one stroke from root to tip, than Bane spilled down his throat, crying out as if in grief, and John followed him to a choking, shaking climax that squeezed tears from his eyes.

When it was done, John crept up onto the bed, exhausted and drowsy; Bane let him, holding himself in enforced stillness, while John curled up against his side and raised a hand to stroke the ruin of Bane's cheek.

Bane flinched, but he met John's eyes, and whatever he saw there held him fast for a few moments, until the torment of his bitten lips proved too much for John and he raised his mouth to Bane's to kiss him-

But Bane pulled away at that, his shame and self-loathing disappearing behind leather and steel as he pulled his mask back into place as rapidly as the protesting material would allow. And John watched the beautiful man, the lonesome wild murderous beast, return to the silent and threatening form of Lady al-Ghul's champion, and turn his back on John- though he did not bid him leave the bed- and lie silently, as if asleep, until John slipped away into darkness, huddled against his back.


	6. Chapter 6

After that night, John's cot lay empty at night. During the day, he perched on it and performed his armor-labors, speaking with Bane when he was present and reeling through daydreams of shame and delight when he was not. He swore to himself, again and again, that he must stop this; that he was taking advantage, that he would be hurt, that he would hurt Bane. He had seen a hundred campaign arrangements such as this begin and end- it was no oddity in war, no more than a married man would be judged odd for dallying with a whore after a battle. If he had been a less honest man, he would have consoled himself with this knowledge, but he had known himself long enough that this lie would not heal him. He did not want a night's relief with Bane, or even an arrangement after battles; he wanted the man himself, wanted the weight of him sleeping in his bed, wanted the rich voice and the careful touches... wanted a life full of this, whatever life could be built on the love of two men who took no wives.

Two things tore at him: one, that Bane would not kiss him, though by the golden light of the brazier he seemed more than willing to learn John's body and trace the lines of his face with those broad fingertips, and in fact since that first tryst he had only removed his mask in John's presence to eat; and two, that he could see the way Bane's eyes followed Talia, longing twisted and denied until it had become a sickening thing, and he knew that he had once again cast his love after someone who could not return it.

And still he could not restrain himself; each night he crept into Bane's bed and lay, taut and silent with unasked questions, until Bane's strong hand found the bare skin of his shoulder or his collarbone or his ribs and set off the chain of desperate touching and stroking that would ultimate leave them gasping and spent, lying side-by-side. Gradually their fucking evolved, until John slept at night with Bane curled around him, until John laid kisses on every inch of skin exposed by Bane's mask and trailed them down his neck and chest and belly, until Bane was driven mad enough with desire to press John into the mattress with his full weight and rut against his belly until he found his release.

And each morning John accused himself, and found himself guiltier. Bane was ferocious in his pursuit of pleasure, inexhaustible as a boy with spots, and as clumsy and innocent as a man with such sure hands and such brutal experience could be. John wondered if he had been a virgin, and finally asked him; "No," said Bane, his voice dark and distant, and John pursued no further.

Clearly, whatever had been Bane's past knowledge of love, it was not a memory of pleasure. The horror of this assuaged some of John's guilt, and drove him like a goaded beast to fulfill his master's every need- especially given that the things John feared to indulge, given Bane's mass and power, seemed so alien to Bane that they might never occur to him unless suggested.

At last Bane told him a bit more: as a youth in the pit, before he came into his strength and his man's height, he had performed certain favors for other prisoners in return for food, swallowing seed so that he might have bread to swallow as well. No one had ever returned that favor; there had been no enjoyment for him, only humiliation and loathing.

John hated the thought of this, the mental image of jeering criminals fucking his beautiful knight's mouth and leaving him in despair with crusts for his food. He knew Bane had done it willingly, that he had counted it a fair trade; but he hated that now Bane's mouth might as well have been locked away behind a fortress of soldiers as behind a mask, fearing the intimacy of kissing and dreading the thought of more. And he knew that he would never ask for any of it, only lie awake at night with Bane's warm sleeping skin blazing at his back, resting his fingertips gently against his mouth and imagining the sweet crushing softness of those full scarred half-remembered lips.

* * *

Two months had scarcely passed since the death of King Bruce, and John was appalled at how swiftly the wounds in his heart had healed. Perhaps, he thought, he had been grieving for years, knowing that what he craved could never be; perhaps his love for Bruce had at last been soured beyond repair, as Bane's crippling love for the Lady Talia seemed now.

Bane's voice was almost pleading when he ordered John to stop his spying. He had spoken to Lady Talia about the attack and given a cold rebuff; she claimed that her maidservant had been harassed, and her men were under orders to treat harshly any man- regardless of rank- who appeared to be bothering her. "I would not have your talented hands broken by violent fools," said Bane, his voice amused and his eyes dark, and John agreed because there was nothing he could hold back from Bane at all.

And he did not spy, but whenever he saw Selina hurrying through the halls, he followed her as nonchalantly as he could, keeping his distance. _This is not spying_, he told himself, observing that Talia had switched her corseted clothing for a selection of loose fawn and green kirtles. He even had some rationale for slipping into the maid-quarters of Talia's suite when he found the door unguarded, though it flew from his mind immediately when he heard a familiar voice raised in unmistakeable pleasure.

The maid-quarters' door stood open just a crack, and from his vantage point he could see the bed, where the Lady Talia and her skulking maid Selina were locked in a startlingly athletic embrace- Selina devouring her mistress's mouth while her wrist worked furiously below, and Talia groaning between kisses and arching her back until her heels bunched the duvet nearly off the bed.

If John had been a man who desired women, he might have been enticed to watch a while; instead, he felt the shock of this discovery rising to choke him, and staggered back from the door in shock.

Only to discover that the guard had returned, and he was now in a locked and guarded room, beyond which his master's object of tormented desire lay shrieking her way through climax under the ministrations of another woman. _You might have done well to be a maid after all, Bane,_ he thought ruefully, and he knew that he could never, ever tell his master the truth. He wondered how he could bear it, knowing that Bane would still long for her; but he could not imagine Bane's fury, his sorrow, at learning the truth.

Now they lay, slim arms and legs twined, speaking in low voices, and gods help him John was still at heart a spy; he placed his ear to the crack in the door and listened. "You are a woman of passionate convictions," Selina was saying, as if soothing her mistress's conscience.

"And what if I am passionate, but my convictions are not my own?"

"Is that quality not what makes your schemes so effective?" Selina's voice was playful, teasing. "Whatever you say, you say it with such passion that you will never be questioned for it; whatever you wish to be, you _are_ to the bones."

"What does that leave of _me_, though," replied Talia, murmuring so that John could scarcely hear her. "Am I a devoted daughter, a mourning widow, a wicked queen, a princess to be won by her favored knight? Selina, love, I have been a liar for ages, for longer than I've known even you, since I was a child in the pit; I am very good at it. I worry that I will never learn how to tell the truth."

"I only question this," said Selina, stealing a kiss from Talia's worried lips; "is there anyone to whom you can tell no lies?"

"There is no one," said Talia, bitter and sad. "Anyone I would give all my secrets would be endangered by them, and anyone who knew all my truths would swiftly cease to love me."

Outside the door, the guard coughed and moved around the corner, probably rounding to check on his fellows at the front; this was John's chance to depart, and he must take it.

"If you lie so thoroughly that you have yourself become a lie," said Selina, "do they still love you, or your lies?"

"I cannot decide whether you are trying to wheedle my secrets out of me or protect my poor heartbroken knight," said Talia, and a laugh crept into her voice. "I swear to you, love, the only secrets I keep from you are the ones that can kill."

"Mmm," replied Selina, the last thing John heard as he crept from the tiny room into the deserted hall, and he knew the doubt and sorrow in that voice, the doomed hope of the lover who could place no trust in their beloved. He hated every echo of it, every memory of a word from the last five minutes; now he, too, had a secret to keep from his beloved, a secret that had already cost him his own new love.


	7. Chapter 7

"How did you come by your scars?" The words slipped out so easily, but John had spent long enough struggling to compose them that they left a tinge of nausea in their wake. He was bold, foolish enough to bed a man who could kill him easily, but even he was not so brash that Bane's stilled hands and tensed shoulders gave him no pause.

After a moment, Bane took up the motions of oiling his armor again. "You know that I was a whore in the Pit," he said, his voice weary.

John cringed. "Don't say that," he protested.

"Do you then despise whores?" Bane slung the leather over the edge of his bot and turned to look at John straight on. "Is a woman, or a man, who trades the service of their body for the things they need- is that person wicked, or defiled?"

"When you say it thus..."

"You may say it however you like, John. I regret that I was compelled to do these things; I am not poisoned by the memory. Of the regrets I carry, the one that cuts deepest is the day I swore off my whoring, because that was the day they cut me."

John sat, silent and shaking, eyes fixed in his lap to avoid the burning weight of Bane's unflinching gaze. "I apologize," he whispered.

"You never bore a blade against me," said Bane, but his tone was not flippant, and there was gentleness in his voice. "I had half a man's growth on me, and the men had begun to mock me for my... trade. I chose to lash out in rage, swearing I would never take a knee for any other man's cock again, and I chose for my audience the most cruel and brutal of men in that prison. They... assaulted me, but I would not submit- I said that I would rather die under the knife, and that is when they cut me."

"Gods," said John, struggling to contain himself, still fearing that he would incite Bane's wrath.

"The wounds festered, as they were meant to," continued Bane, "and when they had healed enough that I might have taken up my old trade, I had grown broad in the shoulders and dark in the eyes, and my wounds pained me frequently. No one wished any favors from me then; I became a man of battle. I found... a girl, born in the Pit, to protect, and for her I took my greatest wounds, and because of her I was rescued by the sorceror and given my mask."

"Talia," murmured John, and the name flooded his mouth with bitterness.

"I cannot help that I love her," said Bane, finally wresting his eyes from John; "I have forgotten what it feels like, not to love her."

John forced himself to breathe for a few long moments, burying the hot shameful tears that threatened to spill. "The scars were none of your fault," he said at last. "The privilege of your body is yours alone, and no one's to take it from you."

"It is an old wound," said Bane, turning back to care for his armor. "And I wonder that you, who wear guilt and shame like a cloak, have the fortitude to lecture me so."

"You are a warrior who loves his mistress from afar," said John with a wry smile. "I am a man who craves another man's kiss, and would die before causing that man the pain a kiss might bring him. Tell me there is no shame in that craving, no guilt in that knowledge."

John might not have seen the way Bane's hands tightened at that, except that the leather armor creaked intolerably; the two of them worked in silence until the candle burned low and the night grew quiet, and when John joined Bane in his cot they simply lay, clinging, while John thought his heart might shatter with the slightest movement


	8. Chapter 8

Selina might have been a trained spy and a blooded killer, but she was still a woman, and her next days were dark. She wept, a thing she had not done in years; she neglected her duties, and found excuses to be elsewhere in the mornings when the Lady Talia required a maid's assistance to dress and do her hair. A mere lady's-maid might have worried that the chambermaid who took her place would find favor over her, but Selina was... rather more than a mere lady's-maid, and all she feared was that Talia would call her absence strange.

At last the sorrow and heartbreak cooled in her breast, and she determined that if Talia meant to be her foe, she would need to gather a defense. So to this end she began to spy in earnest, not merely slipping information to Alfred and Auld Fox, but spying on her own initiative and tucking away her knowledge to be used as blackmail should she ever need it.

It was from this resolution that she began to make real headway in discovering Talia's secrets- the fire-spells in her boudoir, through which she spoke to her father face-to-face, and her plot to poison Commander Gordon after the new year, with a concurrent scheme to discredit him as an honest man- and at last she saw Talia enter her boudoir in the same gown she had worn before, which Selina had found soiled.

This time Selina cracked the boudoir door and peered within, and caught a glimpse of motion and the grating sound of wood sliding over oiled wood.

She risked a further look, and found the room empty; the sound had come from a corner, and Selina slipped inside and laid her hands upon the panels, pressing and exploring with deft hands until a section of panel gave, revealing a crack. Beyond it echoed faint footsteps, descending far below.

And yet, however she pushed, the panel would not move; Selina worked herself to sweating, pulling and grappling the door, and searched for further catches to release, all with no success. At last she placed her eye flat against the wood to see if she could peer through the crack, and there her nose picked up the astringent tingle of magic, recognized from Talia's witch-fire communications with her father.

There would be no moving this door.

When Talia came back, merely half an hour later, she stripped out of her gown in the boudoir and washed herself in the basin before she opened the door; Selina heard her splashing, and knew why she washed, and felt sick to her stomach. She had thought, perhaps, that Talia was dallying with a nobleman, or a soldier; but nothing lay beneath them except dungeons, and there had been no time to creep all the way to the barracks and back, or to the courtiers' suites. Perhaps Talia was meeting her... her _partner_in this deception, and the thought made Selina's bile rise... at a halfway point? Or perhaps she was making her way to the dungeons...

The thought struck her blind with fear and certainty: Bruce must be alive. There could be no argument of bastardy, if the child had his eyes; certainly the child would be born late, but a long convalescence and a 'sickly' infant would cover that nicely, and it hardly lay outside the plan to begin with. Only two months had elapsed since that tragic wedding; Talia must be growing desperate, visiting whatever cell she kept him in frequently.

He could not be participating willingly. Did she keep him drugged? Was he chained down when Talia went to him, rode him against his will? Had she promised him his freedom, once he had given her an heir? Did he know that she would slit his throat without a moment's twinge of conscience once she had his seed fast in her womb?

She must be drugging him, or bespelling him. Gods, the poor man- how could Talia, who had labored under threat of rape for a decade in the Pit, visit such horrors upon any other person? How could she do this, and expect Selina to love her, and pretend to love Selina in return?

Talia moved through her chambers, pouring wine and heaping cheese and cakes upon a platter, then climbing still-nude under her duvet to devour her foodstuffs; Selina, feigning sleep in her maid's chambers, lay awake with her throat tight and her belly quivering as Talia completed her repast and lowered the lamp.

"Selina," called Talia, softly; she was not, it seemed, willing to wake her maid if she were sleeping, a strange note of thoughtfulness that nearly reassured Selina for a few moments- surely, whoever she had taken as a lover, Talia would have her child from a bed of consent.

Then she heard a faint shuffling of sheets, a low moan, and she knew the longing quaver in that voice, knew the ache of swollen and battered unfulfillment and the soft lifting intakes of breath and the flickering rhythm of Talia's pleasure, and despite herself Selina closed her hand tight over her own mound- her body would always respond to Talia's, always kindle at the knowledge of Talia's shudders and moans, even when she thought her mistress a monster. And yet she could not bring herself to participate in this, in the aftermath of some stranger's thrusting within the tight hungry space where Selina's own mouth and fingers were meant to be, and when she heard the long helpless fluttering sigh of her mistress's release she lifted her hand from the pounding flesh between her own thighs, unsatisfied and unsatisfiable, to tuck both hands beneath her pillow and lie awake in conflict while her mistress slept.


	9. Chapter 9

Bane had not seen the Lady Talia for days; her duties as Queen kept her busy, he knew, but this seemingly minor separation had a strange hollow feeling to it, a guilty relief and simultaneous regret. Truth be told, Bane would normally have haunted Talia's suite until he caught a glimpse of her, or had a moment's excuse to converse. He had simply... somehow... neglected to do this, forgotten to spend time hurting over her, in the urgency and excitement of his new preoccupation.

He felt certain that he should be consumed with guilt when he saw her at last; after all, he had spent decades within a few coins' reach of any number of whores, within a careless word's grasp of lovers and brief dalliances, and not one of them had truly tempted him. Though he was far beyond the regret and loathing of the Pit, he had near convinced himself that he had a true distaste for the pleasures of the flesh. Only Talia still held any attraction for him, a temptation so far removed from his body that it allowed him to separate himself into the fiercely-denied physical self and the longing, powerful emotional self- the selves that John had begun to draw back together.

And there was the crux of the matter. What he felt for Talia was pure, crystalline, sharp as a razorblade and distant as a star; what he felt for John was immediate and tangible, physical as hunger and- gods, he hardly dared admit it to himself- it moved him in his soul, left him longing, felt like the comradeship of battle and the safety of home at once.

He had no name for it, but it consumed him, and so when he saw the Lady Talia rounding the corner ahead of him- loose-clad and wimpled- the breath fell out of him like the load from a broken cart and he remembered a whole week's worth of suffering at once.

"My lady," he said, and though decorum called for him to bow his head, he stood stricken in the hall and stared at her, lips parted against the steel and leather that bound his face.

"My knight," said Talia, and she tilted her head and smiled at him, the smile that was only ever his. "How fare you, and your men?"

"Very well, my lady," replied Bane, and hesitated for a moment before plunging on: "I have seen little of you, these few days."

"We must meet soon, and speak over a private dinner," said Talia. "I have missed you, Bane."

A private dinner, a meal without eavesdropping ears? "And I have missed you, Talia." There had been other things he wanted to ask her, things that required discretion, things he hoped he could remember before Talia could summon him to her chambers to break bread— things that had utterly slipped his mind now, lost in the complex and smoke-sweet beauty of her face.

She moved to brush past him, and her scent trailed over him. Once he would have taken in her scent, her exhaled breath, and tasted it on his lips for hours; now, though, he was a changed man, a man who had felt his flesh on another's, a man with newborn vestiges of confidence in circles beyond those of killing. It was with the memory of John's pliant skin that he raised his hand to grasp Talia's upper arm, a simple and honest gesture, nothing strange between friends who had shared a ratty blanket for years in a dark prison; but now his palm hungered for the knowledge of _her_skin, and she stumbled at his touch and half-pulled away, half-fell before he caught her.

There was a shape to her clothing, an unexpected dimension, a pillowed addition at her middle, and it took him a moment to realize that Talia had padded her belly to counterfeit pregnancy. Of course she had; she was several months behind schedule in producing a child, and the scheme—

Already she feigned a gravid womb, and had no lover to plant his seed? Surely she could not be so foolish. Even between newly married couples longing for a child, the space between vows and conception sometimes rolled on for several months. She would already be seeking a father for her child if she… if she…

But Talia caught her feet, a deep flush in her cheeks, and swept past him without a word, leaving him to realize at last that he would never have been the father of her child, that she had already chosen another and was content with her choice, and that in this— as in all things— he had been her fool. He pictured John, wry lips and almond eyes adoring him unstintingly, and he knew that in the thousands of touches between himself and his manservant-enemy there had never been a hurt that stung this deep.

* * *

The day passed in a sick haze, a nausea of the spirit. Bane finished his supervision of the yard, watched his men beat and block each other with staves and swords, stalked the armory and terrified its inhabitants, and finally locked himself into his billet with a pile of leather strops and every edged weapon from the armory with even a hint of the twinkle that betrayed an edge out of true. For the rest of the afternoon he worked, while his mind broke itself upon the things that no strop or steel could put straight again.

The scent of John had worked its way into every plane and crevice of Bane's room, sweat and milk-lye soap and the linen-page savor of his skin. Bane could smell him through even the metal of his mask, could imagine the salt and sweet of him even though he had never truly tasted; there seemed to be no place in himself to hide from the way John's throat moved, from the fractional inclines of John's mouth and the meanings behind each subtle degree.

He had come here to ponder Talia's actions and motives, to begin the painful process of burning and cutting her from his heart, and instead he discovered that she had begun to diminish in his mind to a girl again, a small sweet friend he had protected for nearly twenty years. The corners of his mind where once he had treasured the flicker of leafy sunshine in her curls and the milky curve of her shoulder had changed, taken hard shapes of muscle and graceful patterns of straight dark hair, had become _John_. Vivid memories replaced the imagined ones, images with sounds and textures to match them, the certainty of John's regard and trust uprooting tremulous hopes from misinterpreted smiles.

And where Talia remained, she was no longer a temptation and an object of bittersweet longing; she was a girl, a young woman with a sweet smile and a vicious mind, a child quick to kill and quicker to lie, never counting the cost of deception and destruction to her own soul. She was young, Bane realized, for all that she had slain her bridegroom and taken his kingdom; she was of an age where young men still carry their first beards and their first loves. Below the disguised surface of her, dark and yawning depths opened, hungry for sun and choked beneath the placid green lawn of water-weeds.

If she had felt the need to lie to Bane, her oldest friend, there must be no person left to whom she could tell the truth. The decisions she made now were world-changing ones, with thousands of lives at stake, and who advised her? Had he abandoned her after all, in his pursuit of a dream? Was she alone?

The sound of a hand at the latch roused him, and John opened the door to find him sitting in near-darkness, surrounded by flawlessly honed weaponry and thin-scraped leather shreds.

"Bane," said John, worry in his voice.

"It's nothing," replied Bane, but his throat felt thick and rusted.

"Nothing enough to drive you through three days' work without stoking the brazier at all?" John closed the door behind him and stripped off his shirt as he crossed to the brazier. The smell of him flooded the air, chasing away thought and memory and Talia's strangeness in his mind. For a moment there was relief, the return of something _right_ to this small world, and then growing grieving rage. How dare he, this upstart hedge-knight spy? How could he come into Bane's home and tear away and replace everything he held dear, and kiss him and touch him and never ask to be kissed in return even though his eyes were filled with it? How _dare_he displace Talia in his dreams, make his flesh a hungry beast where once it was an obedient tool, leave Bane wanting to expose the ruin of his mouth and feel skin against it and hope that the look in John's eyes would be untempered by disgust?

It hurt too much, it hurt him to standing and through the bull's-charge to seize John by the shoulders and it hurt him into a roaring wordless groan as he crushed John into the wall, narrowly missing the brazier and leaving John's feet dangling off the floor.

"_You_ did this," rasped Bane, "you _made_me this way, and I can't— I can't—"

John didn't reply, but his breath came in gasps, and his lips parted as if to make words. The tautness of his shoulders and the grip of his forearms on Bane's biceps spoke of fear and long training against danger, but his wary eyes said: trust, I trust you.

"Take off my mask," said Bane, and when John did not immediately comply he crushed his body into him, ground his hips against John's until he felt a hardening response, and he repeated: "Take it _off_ of me, gods damn you—"  
John's fingers were quick, and he managed to unbuckle half of it before he remembered that there should be some way to give a dose of numbing medicine, but Bane dodged his attempts with a snarl. "I want to _feel_it," hissed Bane, and John went back to unbuckling with trembling hands, and after only a few more moments the mask peeled away and clattered to the floor.

John exhaled, and his breath shuddered across Bane's lips, hypersensitive between the numb ribbons of scar. "Do you feel it," murmured John, and Bane's mouth took his, tasting salt skin and faintly dry lips and startled movement as John's lips took the shape of a syllable. _No,_ mouthed Bane; he knew what came next, horror and embarrassment and withdrawal and shame, and all he wanted now was the length and the depth of this kiss, to drown out for a moment what would follow after. He mouthed the line of John's lower lip, feeling scars catch roughly on the fullest part, feeling his skin draw and pucker as he followed that shifting slope and found the place where it melted into wet-soft mouth. John opened for him, and he pushed in blindly, desperately, curling his tongue to trace the vault of John's palate, feeling the breath rush from John's nostrils across his cheek and feeling his own familiar groans rising through his chest. And John let him, and John yielded to him, and John met him and fought back and took in return, and nothing had ever hurt this much, not the wounds of battle nor Talia's lies nor the growing stabs of agony that racked him now, alone and bare without his mask.

He felt the kiss ending the way a drowning man feels his last breath escape. He braced himself for pity, for loathing, for John's eyes to drop away from his own; but as John pulled back from the kiss, though his bruised red mouth quivered, his gaze held Bane's, fierce and afraid at once.

Bane was not accustomed to keeping close watch over his mouth; it was hidden from most, no need to disguise his thoughts, and every shift in his expression felt naked under John's eyes. And still, even while John traced the lines and corrugations of Bane's face, no hint of condescension appeared in those almond eyes, not even the shadow of distaste. Something softened in John's face, and then John's hand rose and his thumb trailed over Bane's lips, smearing the faint traces of the kiss.

"Hells," said John, voice glowing and broken, "saints, my gods, I do love you."

The script of Bane's imagining did not exist here. He knew he should say something in return, but everything around him seemed to be collapsing, and he let John slide down from tiptoes to the flat of his feet and staggered backward toward his cot. Knives of pain raced up his spine, each piercing deeper than the last; an oppressive reeling hum closed in from all sides.

He knew this feeling, though he had thought it long dead: _fear_, fear of loss and fear of isolation, fear of new dark beautiful things with unimaginable dangers and difficulties lying within. He had been loved, as a soldier loves his commander, as a child loves her protector; he had never been loved like this, and it terrified him to his bones.

"Talia does not love me," he began, intending to say a hundred other things, but his tongue lay stricken in his mouth. Talia did not love him, and he was free to love and be loved, and nothing had ever been so right or so painful.

And yet John's face twisted as he spoke, unreadable. "No," he agreed, "she does not," and he looked away, fixing his eyes upon the mask where it lay, half under John's unused cot.

_Will you kiss me again,_ Bane wanted to say, and _I will never hurt you if I can help it,_ and _I have been a fool_. But he hurt so much that his breath came in gasps and his ribs seared him with each gasp, and he felt his consciousness crumbling like an undermined wall.

John was beside him now, crouched over him, cradling his head; the comfort of touch and the comfort of steel, the mask closing over his face and the astringency of medication tingling in his throat. The pain receded, leaving the shaking aftermath of adrenaline in his veins, and he found himself lying across John's thighs, still cradled against John's slim forearm, and those dark eyes looking down at him.

"Are you all right," said John; his palm smoothed across Bane's chest, and Bane caught him by the wrist and tackled him to the bed.

Now he felt keenly the absence of kissing; his mouth opened uselessly against his mask, lips seeking soft flesh instead of steel, and finding only their familiar prison. And John, too, kissed his mask and breathed through it and groaned, frustrated and longing. They moved this way, skin gliding against skin, looking for some way to get closer than lips could take them; but there was no replacement, not even when John pulled back to fix him with a tentative, vulnerable, questioning look, not even as John took up the armor-oil and opened himself, fingers probing and stretching while Bane rutted against his belly and groaned and hoped and feared.

Then Bane took him, slid inside of him with a slow careful push, and John lay widespread and utterly naked before him, breathing shallow and fast, borne almost to the edge of his bearing by this most intrusive touch. And Bane held himself still and steady, too afraid to move, too afraid that he would spend himself and bare his soul and speak the words that echoed behind his lips.

At last they accommodated one another, the moment of crisis withdrawn past the threshold of movement, and gently Bane rocked into John, letting himself ride and crest each swell of pleasure. John, for his part, yielded beautifully, moaned and hissed and arched beneath him, matching him stroke for stroke until they both strove against each other like wrestlers, savage and distraught in their pursuit of pleasure.

John was the first to succumb, pleading wordlessly even while Bane caught his length in one hand and worked him to helpless climax; he curled inward as he came, as if protecting his heart, and the convulsion of him around Bane's cock brought him to the point of crisis as well, and he shuddered as he spilled into John's depths, biting his half-numbed tongue until it bled to prevent himself from saying the things that would leave him completely vulnerable.

And if his mouth tasted of blood afterward, there was no other who could taste his mouth or see the streaks of red, with his mask to protect him; with John curled to his chest and trembling as if in tears, there was no one to see if Bane's own eyes shone and if his tears fell to seep below the edges of the leather straps. He was alone, even with John against his skin and leaking his seed onto their shared bed; but he was safe, with no lips to steal his secrets from his own breath.


	10. Chapter 10

John awoke late; through the single high window-slit, around the heavy fur rug that covered it, golden light seeped into the room. The sun did not touch that window until at least tenth bell this time of year. John kicked back the linens in a panic of old habits, deep ingrained.

The bed was empty, besides his own sleep-heavy limbs and the soiled linen sheets; Bane had gone without waking him. John had risen from his master's bed every morning for weeks and slipped away to begin his duties; now he regretted this, and alongside the awful loneliness in his breast there rose the inclination to blame himself. Had he stayed until Bane awoke each day, would Bane have forgotten Talia?

This was foolish, and John knew it to be so, but he was a man of secrets and malformed hopes, and he had worn grooves in these patterns of thought through long use. He had been a kitchen boy in this palace, once, orphaned and subject to the whims and petulances of every other member of service. Anger at others meant beatings; blame was safest turned upon himself, and used as a poisonous goad to train his own thoughts and behaviors, until he could grovel before those who required it and play the wiseacre for those who rewarded it, until his spirit was as supple as his body and what remained in him was a sharp, sly intelligence and a core of anger so deep it had turned to stone.

Now, even knowing it to be folly, he settled into the old mental routine as he washed himself hurriedly and scrambled to dress. Bane's clothing must be carried to the laundry, his practice armor would be needed in the training yard within the hour—

And still the chorus of blame rang out in John's head. _If you had not told Bane you love him, he would not have pulled back— if you had not been such a coward, and told him before now that Talia had no feelings for him— if you had not gone behind his back to spy, he would have trusted you more—_ these thoughts pierced like knives, but the sting of blame and the self-loathing that came with it were familiar, and his world began to reassemble into something that made sense. He was wretched, and he wanted wrong things; only by working hard and doing as he was told, only by keeping his perverse nature secret and by honing his body and his intelligence into useful weapons for others to carry, only in these did he have any worth or meaning.

_If you had not abandoned Bruce to the sorcerer's machinations, to Talia's arms... If you had not let yourself adore Bruce so, and been able to trust yourself with him, and truly befriended him and gained his trust... If you had not been born with such unnatural desires... If you had not been born—_

__With these recriminations pounding in his head, John rounded the corner by the vintner's pantry and saw a flash of familiar dark-brown hair— the hem of Selina's skirt disappeared into the pantry, and the door snicked shut with quiet caution that set off every alarm bell in John's body.

He crouched by the door, recriminations silenced, listening intently; within, Selina's voice murmured in scarcely-audible phrases. John caught only a few words, _Talia_ and _followed_ and gods above, _Bruce_ and _alive_ and _prisoner_ and John fell back against the wall. Any other snippets of conversation were lost, falling against his deaf ears. Selina, spying on Talia rather than serving her? Bruce _alive_, and hidden away? Gods, could it be?

Habit pushed him upright again, quieted his pounding heart and forced him to listen. He knew the voice speaking now— Alfred, the castle steward and the King's confidante, who would certainly have died rather than betray him. It seemed that Selina was working against her mistress now, if Talia were truly Bruce's enemy rather than his bereaved widow.

A third voice rose, this one chiding, and John's brow knit as he recognized Auld Fox, the court wizard. The man rarely involved himself in the affairs of court; his was the domain of alchemy and astrology, impenetrable experiments and puzzling gadgetry. He had been known for bespelling Bruce's armor, and for summoning (some said) the King's demon steed, the black horse called the Bat. John could not imagine Auld Fox embroiling himself in some conspiracy scheme.

Footsteps approached the door, and John dodged away just as the latch lifted, ducking himself behind the corner. The door opened, as softly as before; and Selina's voice drifted to him.

"I have not stolen so much as a pin in a month," she said. "Alfred's silver and china treasures are safe from me, Auld Fox, and I have given you my mistress's darkest secrets and betrayed her to death for you— will you not trust me now?"

"If you have not earned my trust," replied Auld Fox, his voice amused and weary, "then I must not put my confidence in any man but Alfred until I die. You have done well, child. But you have not yet betrayed your mistress utterly— my arts tell me you will have more than one chance yet, to surrender her to her fate or to deliver her from her misdeeds as you choose."

"Will I choose rightly," said Selina, every trace of wit or superiority stripped away, beseeching.

"Yes," said Auld Fox, and John could almost hear the twinkle of his eye as he said it. "Now begone, child, before you ask me more difficult questions."

The door closed and Selina slipped away, hurrying back to Talia's chambers, and John made it as far as the armor storeroom nearest to Bane's billet before he sagged to the ground.

Bruce, alive. Bruce was alive. Somehow the mere whispering of it set the world on its head; the saintly image of Bruce in John's mind (lit with afternoon sun, smiling, only a hint of sadness in his eyes) dissolved into something immediate and pressing: that face, in dim light, tied in a cell or tormented on a rack or bound and gagged in a shed. Were they torturing him? Was he in the palace itself, or had he been carried away somewhere, an exile?

His chest hurt as if crimped with side-stitches; he was nauseated, and he shook. Surely the marriage must be dissolved now. Was he to have another chance with his king? He pictured himself kicking down the door of Talia's chambers and finding him bound within, tearing the shackles from those graceful wrists, lifting his helpless body from a prisoner's cot and carrying him out to freedom, cradled in his arms. He pictured Bruce's eyes opening, widening in recognition; and he told himself that a man might be forgiven one kiss, if he had just saved his king, and he closed his eyes on that image and opened them to the light-blotting form of Bane, who leaned over him with puzzled eyes.

"Are you well?"

"Yes," said John, "of course, never better." He could not even begin to disguise the lie. He could not bear to look at Bane; he did not wish to mingle the memory of this man's flesh with his fantasy of Bruce's rescue.

Bane simply looked at him, offering a broad hand to help John to his feet, and John struggled upright on his own, not wanting Bane to perceive the way he trembled.

"Will you be in the training yard soon," said Bane, shying away from any more dangerous questions, and John allowed himself a moment of relief to respond: "I'll bring your practice armor, and your new boots need breaking in—"

"I apologize," interrupted Bane. "I have wronged you, John."

"I don't want to talk about it," said John, choking on what felt suspiciously like a sob.

"I will not make you speak," said Bane, clenching his fists at his sides and then relaxing them. "It is I who am in your debt, and I wish to make amends—"

"Please," said John, hoarse from the effort of controlling his voice. "Please, don't."

"I have... I have taken a great deal from you, and offered you little enough in return," Bane pushed on. His eyes bored into John, and John fancied he could see through them the next words: _I know that you have loved me, and if I could love you in return— but Talia— I am not the type of man—_

And truly, Bane began to speak the words: _I know that you—_ but John had hurt enough, and he was already torn to the edge of weeping, and he snarled: "If you wish to tell me that you love Talia _deeply_ and _terribly_ and that I could never understand her, or the way you love her, then you are welcome to her! I will never touch you again, if that is your wish— I will resign, and let your lady-love wreak whatever vengeance she likes, and you may have another simpleminded gods-damned manservant to clean your boots while you pine after a woman who is _fucking her maid_!"

There was a short silence; even in the dim light John could see the pulse leaping at Bane's throat. "Fucking her maid," repeated Bane, tasting the words the way a dying man clutches at the sword in his belly. "You know she is with child?"

"Then she's fucking someone else too," said John, light and cutting, at once sickened and elated with the careless viciousness spilling into his words. "But when she's fucking Selina, she likes to touch her hair and speak of _love_ and _protecting_, she likes it when Selina licks her belly and eats her cunt, and she likes to laugh on her pillow about her _poor heartbroken knight_ once she's come. Do you know what she sounds like when she comes? Because _I_ know, now, and so does Selina, because she gets to _make_ her lady come. Have _you_ ever done that?"

He broke off, panting for breath, feeling his lips curl in dark fury. He knew the look in Bane's eyes would haunt him forever, and for now— with anger boiling inside him, with acid on his lips and the bittersweet knowledge that Bruce lived cutting into his heart— for now he did not care.

"I came here," said Bane at last, in tones that John had never heard from him even in the depths of passion, "to find you, to tell you that I love you, that I wish to be as close to you as a man to his bride, that I— that—" His voice broke, and John realized with a fierce triumph that he had reduced his master, his enemy, to weeping. "John, gods, _fuck_, have I hurt you so badly? Why— how can you say these things, if you love me as I love you?"

"Certainly you love me now, with Talia revealed as a whore," said John, face contorted with nastiness and temper. "Of course, now that I've taken your cock in every hole, now that you'll need a bedwarmer while you find the next woman you'll follow like a puppy while she fucks everyone but you—"

"I have never wished to strike you before now," said Bane, thick and dangerous. "I will not strike you now, but gods, John, do not tempt me."

"And this is how a man speaks to the man he loves," mocked John, spreading his arms in false demonstration.

"I _do_ love you—"

"You do _not_. You want your cock suckled, that's all."

Bane clenched his fists again, and John remembered that this was the champion who had gutted four men in simultaneous combat, who had punished Bruce's armies so thoroughly that he married a sorcerer's daughter to save his kingdom, and now John was taunting him to murder in a dark closet where he would never be missed. For the first time since he had begun his tirade, the burden of fury lifted from him a little, and he saw the storm of pain and rage and confusion and loss in the eyes above the mask before Bane turned and left the room in silence.

"Gods strike me down," said John, hating himself more than he had imagined possible; the words cracked into a sob, and he staggered from the storeroom once the thunderous rumor of Bane's footsteps had faded away.

Selina rounded the corner as he emerged and stopped, startled; John realized he must look a mess, eyes tear-swollen and face still twisted with emotion.

"Bruce is alive," he said to her, and she went white all over, but she nodded.

"I will do anything to find him," said John, and Selina nodded again and offered him one of the towels she held.

She waited for him to scrub his face and take a few deep breaths, then tilted her head. "Can you open a door for me?"


	11. Chapter 11

How strange, John thought, to be granted admittance to Talia's quarters so easily, when for so long he had been forbidden even the hallway outside it. Selina's slim strong hand grasped his wrist, and though the guard at the door of the maid's quarters raised a brow, he let Selina drag John into the space beyond without a word.

Selina flung the door open into her mistress's quarters, and John followed her through and beyond, to the locked door of the boudoir, which Selina had open in a moment's space. Within sat Talia, seated before and leaning upon her vanity, for a moment vulnerable and unguarded and wretchedly tired, a woman of twenty-two summers with the weight of a thousand lies upon her back.

Then she drew herself upright and her face smoothed into a mask, and her nostrils flared as she recognized the intruders.

"Selina, what is this? Why would you bring _him_ here?"

"We've come for Bruce," said John, when Selina failed to speak. "He lives, does he not? Speak wisely, woman, you are bargaining for your life."

Talia watched John closely, like a rabbit who has sighted a fox, but she spoke to Selina: "Has he harmed you?"

"No, my lady," said Selina; her voice emerged as a whisper, a tremor from her throat.

"Does he have a weapon?"

Selina did not answer, but instead took a long, shuddering breath, strengthening herself; John felt her spine straighten.

"Selina," said Talia, and her perfect, haughty mask collapsed upon itself, and her voice broke as she leaned forward. "Oh, god, have you betrayed me?"

She was close to John's side, and he heard the break in her voice as she replied: "I loved you, my lady-"

"Loved? You _loved_ me?" Talia's voice rose, grief and disbelief and anger tightening the words in her throat and baring her teeth.

"You came to bed _dripping his seed_," spat back Selina, and by the end she was shrieking. "You bragged that you had murdered the man who loved you, and I discovered that you _lied_ to me, when I was so blindly devoted to you, only because you _raped_ him and you came to our bed _smeared_ with him."

"There was no rape! My gods, Selina, what _should_ I have told you? Knowing that my father would have you slaughtered the moment I said a word?"

"And you would have wielded his knife, I trust? Would you have waited until I was asleep in your arms, or would you have poisoned me from your own cup?"

"I only ever lied to keep you safe!"

"From your own gods-damned murdering ice-cold hands, you father-fucking bitch!"

"Selina- please-" Talia gripped the vanity's edge, scattering useless swathes of colored powder across the silk tablecloth.

"If he'd said the word, would you even have argued? Would you have spared a few words to beg for my life, or would you have gone straight for the knife?"

"He has already called for your death, and here you stand, screaming at me like the self-righteous slattern you are, never mind that I've saved your life-"

"Do you expect me to believe a _word_ from your lying mouth?"

"Selina, I do love you, I would never-" Shame closed Talia's throat, and Selina thrust out her jaw in bitter absolution as tears spilled from Talia's eyes.

"It's not love if you can shed it the moment it becomes inconvenient, _my lady_. It's not love if you're waiting for a quarrel so you can put a dagger in my back. Did you take me for a fool, thinking I would not see my own fate forecast with the king's? When I saw through your lies, would you have taken me by force as well?"

"I would never take _anyone_ by force, least of all you, despite your _assumptions_. How could you accuse me of these things, make me such a monster, and hold yourself superior over me? You lecture me on love, when you have been betraying me all along?"

"And you lecture me on treachery, when you planned my death? You, who gave Bruce the poisoned cup?"

"Bruce is-" Talia's eyes flickered over John, who stood with clenched fists, breathing like a blown warhorse. "Bruce was nothing next to you, Selina, you know that. Why would I keep so many secrets from you, if not for your safety?"

"Bruce _is_," repeated John, shouldering his way into the conversation. "Bruce is _where_?"

"Hidden," spat Talia, defiant, never taking her eyes from Selina.

"Surely you realize," John pressed, "that your father's schemes are ended. Will you tell me, or the king's torturers?"

"Neither," said Talia, and she picked up a thin ivory rod from the vanity. John dove for her hand, fearing some sorcery, but before he could snatch it from her she snapped it in two and dropped the pieces to the floor. No smoke billowed up; no sparks poured forth; only the pieces of the rod bounced to the carpet, and as John seized Talia's wrists she relaxed, pliant, into his grip, tear-swollen eyes fixed on the carpet.

Unnerved, John nodded to Selina, and she took up a silk scarf from the dresser and bound Talia to the chair, arms behind her back. It disturbed John to see the familiarity with which Selina's hands pressed into Talia's flesh, the way Talia avoided Selina's eyes but did not shy from the brush of her long hair over Talia's shoulder; a lover's betrayal, a hundred broken promises, the hurt and fury in Bane's eyes as John turned to leave him. He was only glad that Talia did not resist; he did not think he could bring himself to do any true harm to a woman, now that he knew Bruce still lived, and he would have been sick to see Selina bruise Talia's skin.

"The door is there," said Selina, nodding to the corner beyond the vanity, voice cold and methodical. "I suspect it to be magically weighted; Talia can open it, but I could not. Perhaps you..." She trailed off as John strode across and, with scarcely a moment to scan the wall with his trained eyes, depressed the panel and produced a quiet crack in the wall. He bent his shoulders to the task; the door slid only a few inches. Selina came to help him, and with great effort they budged it further, until enough space was revealed that they could each slide beyond. Still Talia sat, silently accusing Selina with her eyes, waiting for her magic to take effect, while the two of them descended into the darkness.


	12. Chapter 12

Once, Bane had known such agony that he was stripped of his humanity. Once he had lain helpless in a dry corner of the Pit, raving and snapping like a dog at his fellow prisoners, living on the scraps and slop brought him by the foul-smelling sawbones who had sewn up his back, let alone by the sole merit of superstition but subject to curses and speculation about which demon had possessed him.

He had not cared. He had been lost in a wilderness of torment; every movement was a battle, and every shift in temperature pierced his limbs and his spine and his face with a thousand lances. In his memories, he made it different; it soothed him, to pretend that he had clung to the thought of Talia's wide eyes seeing the sky for the first time. In reality, he had nearly forgotten she existed, until he saw her thin face over him again, until the abyss of pain closed into solid ground— a soft bed— beneath him and he met his new master for the first time.

The mask had closed over his face like the lid of a sarcophagus, the numbing tingle of sorcery wrapping around his wrong-healed vertebrae and spreading throughout his body like a flood of oily water. In time, even he had forgotten his old face, gladly trading his humanity for the surcease of pain; all that mattered was Talia, beautiful and fierce, free of the fatalism and anguish and knowledge of pain that had bound some part of Bane's soul forever in that prison. If there was pain, there was pain of the spirit, the pain of longing and hope that no sorcery could dull, and Bane had embraced it.

Only now that bittersweet pain had become a blade in his chest, a torment too great to embrace; his mind could not wrap itself around it. How had he been so blind, to imagine that even the beloved daughter of a sorcerer could escape the moral degradations of the Pit? His burden was pain to be endured, the knowledge of someday-death at his master's bidding or at Talia's, the isolation and emptiness of a scarred body and a war-honed mind. Hers, it seemed, was something darker and more insidious: had she been stripped of her taste for truth by all those years of lying and hiding? Was she so devoid of feeling that she felt no twinge of conscience when she lied to him, her most loyal creature? Had she perceived his longing for her, and seen it as the handle by which one holds a tool?

He trained in the arms-yard, and his squires wisely made themselves absent; he tore apart a training dummy with a mace, and switched to the staff until he broke two of them, and then he took up one of the leather-wrapped logs used by the axemen and pummeled it with his bare fists until even his horn-callused knuckles began to bleed.

There was no pain in his flesh; physical pain was no longer his to suffer. Only a bone-deep ache in his hands whispered of his body's few remaining limitations. He felt his chest heaving, and the tendons of his arms beginning to tighten after their work, and it was only now that he began to reckon the other pain that he suffered— the greater pain, which pervaded him utterly, which dwarfed the hot shame and rejection of Talia's deceit as a mountain is dwarfed by the sky.

He _knew_ that John loved him. He knew this in his bones, in his drug-numbed tongue, in the battle-ache of his loins. _I know what it is_, John had said, _to love, and be unloved_, and what Bane had seen in his eyes—

And yet if he had learned any lesson from this… this madness with Talia, he had learned that love is not enough on its own to heal the scarred spirit, and how even the strongest love may be twisted by guilt and ambition. He recalled the long years he had spent, wrestling within his spirit as he reconciled with his scars and with his favors sold for bread, and for a moment he saw John as John must have seen himself: stripped of his hard-won status, bound to a man he saw as a merciless killer— a man the size of a draft horse, a man who could (and did) break his enemies across his knee like dried kindling— and driven, _reduced_, by his own passions to something lower than a whore: something that let itself be touched and invaded for no payment beyond the fleeting pleasure of the flesh, against honor and loyalty.

As if John's pleasure were not wealth beyond every coin in the kingdom; as if he had not, with a quarter-hour's use of mouth and hands, brought his greatest enemy low and held him helpless in his own grasp. Surely John understood this, thought Bane, and the clarity of thought retreated into a confused whirl of emotion and frustration.

Then there was a moment of ringing silence, like the hollow of sound when a bell is muffled, and Bane felt the summons like the shifting of the earth beneath him. He knew this feeling; he knew that he was only caught up in it because he was, to some degree, magically entangled with al-Ghul. He knew that his master would arrive soon, and that until al-Ghul's arrival Talia would be in danger, and despite the confusion within him, Bane ran for his mistress's side.


	13. Chapter 13

Talia was bound, and weeping. If her clothing had been in disarray, if there had been a mark on her body, Bane would have killed everyone in the palace; instead, he cut her bindings and watched as she rubbed her wrists absently. A few years ago, she would have thrown herself into his arms, to hide her face until she had mustered the courage to go on with a steeled face. Now, she seemed miles away, and her eyes swollen with tears.

"Who bound you, Talia," demanded Bane, and he threw a glance to the gaping hidden door, from which a foul, cold draft issued. "Did they go—"

"It does not matter," barked Talia. "The plan is collapsing. My father will be here, at the symbol in the throne room, in perhaps a quarter of an hour, and I must— _I must_— be there."

Of course al-Ghul would not be bound by his own summons, not in the same way as his minions; Bane stood here still reeling with the need to help Talia, though she would not point out an enemy for him to destroy, and al-Ghul would be here in a quarter of an hour, long enough to finish a meal or change one's robes. Long enough, at any rate, with the powers that Bane knew he had at his disposal— whatever the excruciating expense of those powers might be.

But he followed her, because he must, still thrumming with the urge to fight her battles for her— and for once, he resented his protection of her, knowing that it was the dominance of her father's will over his own— and she led him to the throne room, to the great golden plaque of knotwork that had been her father's wedding-present, which had been set into the mosaic of the floor. It had been made for the occasion, crafted to complement the generations-old artwork to which it would be added; crafted according to al-Ghul's specifications, to create a design of his own personal usage.

Bane's derision of his master, however, seemed to be in vain; when they arrived, al-Ghul had already appeared, standing in the midst of slow-clearing smoke while Commander Gordon and a frail, older man with dark skin were ushered into the room by servants. Al-Ghul ignored them; Gordon, carrying Dent's filthy, gore-spattered helmet as if he had expected a royal occasion, stood at attention, while the older man made a deep and humble courtesy and remained there, head bowed and robes spread on the floor.

"Talia," said al-Ghul, and his leonine features might have been dusted with a faint smile; "I gather that your plan has not come to fruition?" _Her plan_, as if she herself had created it, instead of being bound to the schemings of her father and his advisors; as if they had not seized upon her vulnerability of spirit, seen her willingness to lie and her inability to foresee the moral price, and sent her to be despoiled by their enemy, impregnated and used up and at last cast aside when her heedless lies ruined her for al-Ghul's usage.

"I have been… obstructed," said Talia, kneeling deeply. "I have failed you, Father. I crave your guidance, and your power to throw down my enemies." Her voice shook with fear, and with her eyes downcast she could not see the smirk that spread over al-Ghul's face. The plan might be defeated— and Bane still had no idea what had finally closed the door on it— but al-Ghul was a man who loved to see his minions grovel, and the sight of his stubborn, independent daughter begging him for aid certainly seemed to please him.

Bane felt sick.

The castle steward, Alfred, opened one of the doors near the throne, as if to peek inside. But instead of turning and running as any sane man might, seeing Gordon in captivity and Talia quaking at her father's feet, he flung the door open and rushed— yes, rushed, in utter defiance of his age and dignity— to the side of the older man, white-faced with worry, not even sparing a glance for al-Ghul in his robes of state.

"Very well," said al-Ghul, "for such an obedient daughter a father may be excused indulgence," and with exceeding disdain he sat himself upon the empty throne where his daughter had begun to build her kingdom.

* * *

There were dungeons, and then there were oubliettes, and then there was this: almost seventy steps, winding through a tunnel whose air grew ever fouler, before the walls gave way to a water-chiseled cave with a cold wind blowing in it, featureless and dark as the grave. John held a candle, which had sputtered in their descent but now flared with the fresh shivering air; when they emerged into a dark and echoing space, Selina bade him stand still, and they listened carefully.

"I hear your steps," said a voice, faint and hollow, which John had never thought to hear again; "but you are no princess, no false wife—" There came a moan, a half-mad sob, and John threw himself toward the source of that sound with his heart torn in half, and found against the wall of the cavern his own beloved king, now gaunt and pale with a chain about his throat and his legs drawn up beneath him in the unrelenting chill.

Selina had her lockpicks with her, and John privately marveled that he had ever thought her a mere lady's-maid; and while she did her work John looked about, to see how Bruce had fared. There was a filthy mat of straw, and a pool of dripping water, and a bucket near overflowing with waste; and there was a pewter plate upon which lay a hollow crust of bread and several fowl-bones, a generosity in these circumstances that shocked John—the thought of feeding fowl to a prisoner was strange indeed.

Bruce saw him looking, and laughed bitterly: "Bought and paid for, Sir Robin, with the coin of shame; she would not touch my flesh, but she hoarded what I gave her of it." More laughter, growing ever unhinged; the lock fell free, and Bruce struggled to stand, and John and Selina caught him by the arms, and Bruce laughed and wept between them as they ascended, telling them in prison-mad ravings how he awoke in this tomb, how his blushing bride had come to him with food and water, how he had thought himself saved; how Talia had cajoled him, how he had refused her, how her voice had filled with relief and spite together, and how she had traded him small things—bedding, meat, a blanket against the chill—for the strangest of coin, for his seed in a cup.

They wept to hear it, John and Selina both: John, for the degradation and torment of Bruce's imprisonment, and for his own months of heartbreak; and Selina, for what she did not say, but there was hope on her face in the dim-flickering light, and she shuddered as Bruce described how he had expected Talia to bind him and force him, and how rather she had paid him in bread.

As, John knew, she had once heard of another man trading himself for his food; and he wondered if Bruce had spent these months in the dark coming to terms, as Bane had, with how he had whored himself for crusts.

It was in this fey mood that John led Selina and Bruce into the great hall; and it was with this in his mind that he saw al-Ghul seated upon the throne, and Talia bowing before him with her neck bent as if for the headsman's blade, and Bane's broad shoulders steady as ever where he knelt in fealty beside the woman who had tortured John's king.


	14. Chapter 14

"And when the disloyal are purged from the palace," al-Ghul continued, having lined up his captains, "we will have a public display of their foolishness, and set the soldiers that remain to dividing their belongings; then we will have a cleansing in the town, and any who will not bow and swear to me will be judged by their peers, and their possessions forfeit to the loyal."

A bloodbath, a pogrom. Bane had seen this before, how easily a man would sell another to earn even the meagerest scraps; the town would tear itself apart. His men were well-trained, and perhaps would withstand the temptation—but even as he reassured himself, he saw in his mind's eye the lads at their gambling, the trinkets that were hoarded and passed from hand to hand, and he knew that some of his boys would be tortured for the others' greed.

The side-door behind the throne opened a crack, then swayed back to; probably a servant thinking better of it, Bane reasoned, and wished before the gods he could run back to the sculleries as well.

"As for the disloyal," added al-Ghul, pausing to look down at his daughter's shaking shoulders, "where is your handmaid, your pet that I gave you? Has she perished in your defense?"

Queasy silence fell. The servant at the side-door forgot himself—herself, apparently—and put her slim fingers around the jamb, listening. _Fool girl,_ thought Bane. _Run while you can, before his mad vengeance strikes_.

"She—she fell in my quarters," came Talia's voice, the false confidence in her tone turning brassy, "only a minute before I broke the signal stick, she was struck—"

Al-Ghul laughed at her. "You never could lie to me, girl," he said, and his face grew dark. "She has betrayed us, yes, I see that from your face;" for Talia had cast her head back to stare up at her father, desperation clear on her features.

"I am certain that she fell," pled Talia. "She was loyal to the end! There was—so much blood—"

"And I am certain that she lives," snarled al-Ghul, and the air crackled with an acrid charge around him. "She betrayed us, and she lives! How could you let her live, Talia? I called for her death a week ago!"

The blood drained from Talia's face. "I thought—I thought you spoke in jest, in hyperbole—"

"You thought I was a fool," spat al-Ghul. "You are a weak-hearted woman, like your mother before you, no constancy to you at all, only lies and simpering. I told you to kill her! You should have leapt to do my bidding!"

Talia's ashen face fell waxen-still for a moment, raw and open in its hurt; and Bane thought of her lies, of her seductions, of the games that she played with the hearts of her victims, of the abandon with which she had thrown herself into her father's game to earn his love. A wicked woman; a liar; a puppeteer, a spider, a craftswoman with human tools. A girl with a hollow heart.

Al-Ghul would not kill her, this he knew. He would have her humiliated; he would lock her away. Her bright spirit would gutter in a ladies' solarium somewhere, in widow's weeds, and some few years hence she would take a mysterious illness and wither away and be lost.

"You do not love me," Talia said, forcing strength into her words though her voice quivered and cracked, "and she does."

Bane felt the breath of murder in the room. Al-Ghul stood like stone, nostrils flared, simply looking at Talia; then he lashed out with one hand, and a force swept from him, a mighty blow that lifted Talia from her knees and tossed her backward to strike the flagstones with an awful, rib-breaking crunch. "You are my _daughter_," bellowed al-Ghul. "You will _obey me_."

Talia pulled herself up until she sat, hair half-undone, panting and sweating in a heap. "I have done everything you asked! I wed a man I loathed and I let him touch my body—I severed every tie, I spent my allies like coin—"

Al-Ghul struck her again, this time a crushing force from the ceiling that sent her facefirst onto the stone, her arms flopping loose like dolls' limbs. "You will _obey me_," he screamed, his face contorted with violence and rage. Bane's arms hung numb at his sides, and his hands made themselves fists.

She had hurt him. She had hurt him _so much_. She had cost him years of his life, had mocked him with her teasing, had encouraged him to love her—she had cost him John, his beautiful broken John, had twisted their love…

He could not blame her, this girl who now lay groaning with her nose bloodied and broken, this toy and tool of her father who had learned so well the lessons of imprisonment. He remembered what she had been, before his love had turned to a poisonous thing: a child in a pit, a child with tales of a father who would someday save her, a child only plucked from the Pit for her usefulness, and told that her father's avarice was love.

Behind the throne, the side-door opened, a scuffle spilling out behind it—Selina, pulling against another's hands with such ferocity that the shoulder ripped from her bodice—a man's hand grasping, seeking purchase, catching her at the waist and by the elbows—a man's hand. John's hand.

John.

Bane's sword came to his hand like a hound to its master's call; the breath entered his body and left it in a bull's rush. Al-Ghul would kill Selina easily, terribly, the way he had killed traitors before, suspending her in air and ripping away her skin in sheets, while Talia watched. While he watched.

He knew al-Ghul would kill him, and he told himself to stay his hand even as the blade fell, even as he threw himself at his master in silent determination; the force of al-Ghul's sorcery pinned him to the ground in mid-flight, pressing his sword beneath him until it cut his flesh, crushing him to the earth. Behind the throne, John grappled with Selina, hissing in her ear. The pressure was tremendous, forcing the air from Bane's lungs.

"Even your lap-dog turns against me," growled al-Ghul, palm held out flat as if pressing Bane to the flagstones with sheer force of will rather than by foul magic. "Shall we butcher all your pets, and let you learn remorse?" With a flick of his other hand, the scuffle at the side door broke apart, and Selina's body bounced as he dragged her to the dais and held her thoughtlessly in midair with a word, writhing and twisting.

Talia screamed like a hare in the trap. John emerged from the door, shouting, and his burden was revealed: the old king, Bruce, thin and pale and sweating, leaning heavily upon John's shoulder. Bruce, _alive_. Talia had not slain him.

John must be very happy, thought Bane, and bunched his muscles to heave against the weight of sorcery, gaining some few inches. Al-Ghul frowned and made a motion, and Bane felt searing sharpness in his thigh, like a hot knife slipping beneath the skin. He struggled forward, shouting: "John! Go!"

For he knew he was doomed, even as he labored forward, foot by foot; al-Ghul's sorcery bit at him, gouged deep into his skin like a meat-hook, pulled until the skin separated from the flesh and tore, until a strip the width of four fingers began to peel back. The mask helped; the long knowledge of pain made it easier; but John still did not run, and Bane knotted his shoulders and pulled himself along, dragging himself toward his master, heaving for each breath against the massive weight.

The captains would not help him; they were loyal to their master. If there had been men-at-arms—even the stable-boys—Bane snarled in frustration and dug his elbows into the flagstones, feeling the slice of his sword underneath him as it bit into his breastbone. If he could only reach al-Ghul; if he could only—

A sound rang out, a dull peal of filthy metal striking bone. Commander Gordon stood in his place, imprisoned still by the shackles on his feet, but Dent's helmet lay spinning on the dais, its cheekplate and half its cornet staved in; and al-Ghul stood perplexed in dizzy horror, blood streaming down his face from a great cut on his head, gore matting in his beard as he clasped one hand to his head.

Behind him, Selina fell to the flagstones; al-Ghul turned to catch her again, and the weight lifted from Bane's body, and in a single surge Bane caught up his sword and flung himself through the air and cleaved al-Ghul from collarbone to groin in a single blow.

There should have been some sound, a rush of wind, the rip of dissipation as magic went out of the world; instead there was silence after the breaking of bone, a drip-drip-drip as blood welled from the edges of the dais, the heavy breath in Bane's throat and the knell of his sword as it slipped from his hand and fell, dishonored, to the stone.

Talia pulled herself to her feet, limping, and Bane could not bring himself to look at her. "You killed him," she said, in accusation rather than relief. "You killed him! You _murdered_ him!"

Bane turned to stare at her, aghast. Her eyes showed white all around and her teeth were bared; her father's blood mixed with her own on the hem of her gown, and in her hand was a dagger. "Get hold of yourself, woman," he said, though he could put no real venom into it. He had slain many men on the field of battle, and he still felt the horror of the moment sapping the strength from his limbs; she had fought with no weapon but poison, and that seemingly not even lethal, judging by the old king who now tottered and slipped to the floor as John—

As John leapt to his side, forgetting his King entirely, and threw himself between Talia and Bane. "Don't _touch_ him," shouted John, and Talia screamed and slashed and screamed and blood colored her blade, _John's_ blood. John curled into himself and fell.

A tide of deafening red washed over Bane's consciousness. He was on Talia before John had even collapsed fully, his great hands around her throat like a vice, bearing her to the blood-washed flagstones with his full weight. The dagger spun away. Her eyes went wide, her mouth gaped, her small hands clawed at his own—

"I'm all right," coughed John. The sound was very small beside the thunder of blood in his ears and the kicking of Talia's feet against the wet pavement. "I'm all right, Bane."

He made himself breathe, made his fingers open, felt the rasp of air in her throat. "John," he said, and no other words would come.

"I'm all right," said John, twisting to sit upright, his foot coming to rest against Bane's side. "It's only a slash. I'm fine."

Talia's breathing was horribly loud in the silence of the room. The captains, knowing their fate, had thrown down their swords already and knelt in surrender; soldiers flooded into the great hall and the Commander directed them, picking up Bruce from where he lay and setting about the violent work of taking prisoners. Several of them kept glancing with horror at where Talia lay gasping in Bane's awful grip; they did not look merciful, and even Gordon's tired, sad face spoke of the inevitability of justice.

Alfred and Auld Fox stood over Selina, helping her to her feet, keeping her face turned away, though she perpetually tried to twist and see her lover. Bane, still reeling from the metallic scent of blood and the rage and hurt that knotted in his chest, saw Alfred's expression: he had seen traitors executed, had worked from the beginning for Talia's destruction, and yet there was grim sorrow in his eyes, and he would not meet Bane's gaze, choosing instead to focus his attention on keeping Selina from seeing her mistress's fate.

"Make it fast," mouthed Talia, her eyes deep with fear and resignation.

"A swift clean death?" echoed Bane in mockery, but the wrath he needed would not rise. He wanted to kill her; he wanted to save her. Under his hands she was a child again, trusting as ever—trusting that he would kill her now, and spare her the public march, the torture, the brutal execution…

"The king may be merciful, if we ask," said John, leaning close. "She bound him and let him languish, certainly, but she was not cruel, and she fed him. She could be beheaded."

"She knows al-Ghul's secrets," said Bane, hollow with exhaustion. "She will die under torture."

He could not see his bright bird, his little girl, under the torturer's scalpel, broken with chains. Nor, now that John was safe, now that the blood-lust had receded, could his hands tighten, could he let himself feel the snap of her neck.

"She is, however, yours to kill in vengeance," replied John, much louder now, affecting disconcern.

His to kill. His for vengeance. He tensed his fingers until the knuckles stood out, and she felt it, her eyes opening wide; but no crushing pressure descended on her throat, and her gasps continued.

So he let himself roar at her, let the frustration and sickness and rage in his heart boil over, and when he could make words in his anguish he cried at her: "You treacherous _bitch_, you murdering whore, you will die by my hands—" and he squeezed further, until his thumbs began to encroach on her windpipe, until she writhed and kicked and still her air was not cut off, still she gasped beneath his roaring and breathed and was alive, alive as he wept and raged and feigned his vengeance, alive as his false throttling eased and she—ever conniving—let her body go limp, falling careless into the congealing blood beneath her, boneless as a corpse and still _alive_.

"Take her to the midden heap," ordered Bane, jerking his head at Alfred, beside whom Selina had fallen into blank-eyed despairing silence, "and let whoever come for her body that will, be they ravens or worms."

He saw, as he rolled back onto his haunches and let John wrap the shreds of his shirt around the awful wound on his thigh, how Alfred bent over her, how his hand brushed against her mouth and felt breath, how he paused for a moment to understand; and he saw how Auld Fox came to help them, and how the two old men carried away the burden of their mercy with the bruises springing fresh upon her throat.

Then he pulled himself upright and bent to lift John as well, noting the angle of the slash—the lad would have a fine scar from collarbone to nipple. "I wronged you," he said, not grudging John the words. "You are no man's slave; but I love you, and I hope someday you can forgive me."

John did not push Bane's hand away, leaning against him as he pressed one hand to his breast with a wince. "You are forgiven," he said, and he let Bane half-carry him from the throne room to the infirmary, silent under the weight of words unsaid.


	15. Chapter 15

The day was cold, and had King Bruce not been wrapped in a menagerie's worth of furs, the wind would have cut him to the bone; his face remained pale, these four days later, and his eyes were haunted. Beside him stood Selina, slim and red-eyed and wearing a lady's pearls in her hair, and at his other hand Bane, tall and silent and massive as ever, a man disguised as a weapon.

Beyond Bane stood Sir John of the Robin, clad in brocade and linen rather than steel—for his wound still ached too much for the weight—and trying not to recall the last time he had stood thus at his king's side, displayed for an event. The speeches went on forever, and John found his eyes pulled to the side, examining the others on the dais.

Selina—she was, of course, one of the great heroes of the court now, and her grace and honor had half the kingdom whispering that she would make a perfect wife for their magically-resurrected king. Commander Gordon, however, seemed to be watching her closely, and John knew that he mistrusted her even with Alfred's commendations, not understanding that her hunger for solitude was bereavement rather than subterfuge.

John could not look at her without seeing her face as it had been in the throne room, white as a doll's, unseeing with the shock of her lover's presumed death. His eyes slipped away from her, wretched with unease; he knew the agony of seeing a lover faced with death, and though Talia had been the one to pull the knife, he doubted now that it would have found its mark; and if he wished true death upon Talia, what did he wish upon Selina, who had given so much to find his king?

He could not dwell upon it. His gaze wandered, seeking safety, and caught upon King Bruce, standing as if the effort cost him nothing. In his heart, John probed the old wound, the place where his love had once festered; and he found it aching still, but in the way of a scar in the winter, the memory of pain rather than pain itself. Even now, pale and worn, Bruce remained the same: the well of charisma, the set of his brow, the angle of his regretful smile. Now, though, the fact of his existence no longer hurt. He was a man, a brilliant resilient man, a king who even now found healing in the love and admiration of his people; but John did not love him, and the absence of that love felt much like hope.

And closest to him: Bane, whose love had so undone him, whose warmth even from a pace away felt sweet as sunlight—Bane, who had tried to profess his love, who had untangled at last the bindings of his heart, who had not been the one to profane their touches with shame.

They were both broken men, John realized, neither of them truthful, neither of them honorable. But if Bane could stay his hand for compassion, could shed the aching lost loves of his past, could take off his mask and be kissed—then who was John to be bitter, jealous, guarded?

The ceremony ended, and to great fanfare the king stood and raised his hands in benediction. Then Bruce turned and embraced them each in turn. Gordon returned the embrace stiffly; Selina gave a perfunctory but polite kiss upon each of his cheeks; Bane clasped his hand and drew him up to thump lightly on his back; and John let himself be held, let Bruce press his cheek to John's own, let the king's whisper enter his ear – _you have been my truest companion_—and then released him. The lingering form of Bruce against his body lasted a moment and faded, and John let it go like a pleasant memory, a distant dream.

For as they turned to be escorted back to the palace, the golden heat of Bane at his side was more potent and intoxicating than any twinge of the skin, the brush of Bane's arm against his own at once comforting and exhilarating, the knowledge of things to come like a heap of coals in his belly. And as the royal cohort passed through the arches of the colonnade at the great door, and the shadow of the King's rule fell upon them and concealed them, John drew Bane aside and, unable to find words to express his feelings, pressed his face into Bane's neck and wept.

Bane's arms came around him, enfolding him; the metal of his mask pressed into John's scalp, and Bane breathed into his hair while John shuddered. When at last John recovered himself, Bane murmured, low and muffled in his ear: "Will you have a cot for me in your new quarters, Sir John?"

"Don't be ridiculous," said John, pulling back to wipe his face with a tentative smile. "You'll sleep on the floor."

If they missed most of the feast, no-one was foolish enough to comment; and if Bane's billet was empty and scoured by sunset, and John's old cot set up in his antechamber and then never used, well—they were, after all, the closest of friends, knights who had tempered their bond in blood, and were not men of war allowed certain follies? And were they not heroes, and honorable men?

There came a knock on the door of the hovel. Inside, the old woman left off her stirring and lifted the latch. A cloaked figure entered, low words were exchanged, a pouch traded hands. Then the cloaked figure swept to the narrow bed, where a slumbering shape lay buried in old linens; a careful touch, a hurried whisper, and the figure rose from its sleep and dressed with alacrity, hesitating as if still sore from a beating.

Thus arrayed, the two left the hovel, one with long dark hair streaming from under her hood as she bent to pick up a heavy bundle which glittered at the seams, and the other with the demeanor of a noblewoman, tall and dignified despite a faint limp, still stiff from a period of healing under the old woman's care.

"I cleaned out half the silver in the second parlor," said the first figure, shouldering the bundle. "Should get us a berth on a decent ship."

"You should have stayed," whispered the second figure. "What if we're caught? You could be safe here."

"I could be miserable here," retorted the first, setting off between the hummocks of the twilit field. "I would have to be good."

The second figure sighed, giving in as she followed. "You could have married the king," she said, and the first figure shrugged.

"I hear it's not all it's cracked up to be," she replied, and after a brief shocked silence her companion laughed, sweet and rueful, and followed her away into the dark.


	16. Author's Notes

Author's notes:

Wow, it's been a hell of a ride. In the time since I started this story, I've moved across a continent, started a new job, written a novel, become a published author of short stories, and taught my husband to cook. I cannot thank you guys enough for sticking with me, leaving reviews, and reminding me how much I loved this AU in the first place.

You are all amazing. 3333

Elise


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